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THE LIBRARY OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF

NORTH CAROLINA

AT CHAPEL HILL

THE COLLECTION OF
NORTH CAROLINIANA

C705

E12

4-6 & index

1978-80

UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL

00034012229

FOR USE ONLY IN

THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION

EARLY SOUTHERN
DECORATIVE ARTS

MESDA ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS

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of a Member of MESDA.

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free of charge.

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Members of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts receive the Journal
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For further infotmation, please write to MESDA, Drawer F. Salem Station, Winston-Salem,
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£'

JOURNAL
of

EARLY SOUTHERN

DECORATIVE ARTS

May, 1980

Volume VI, Number 1

Published twice yearly in

May and November by

The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

JOHN BIVINS, Jr., Chairman
Frances Griffin
Bradford Rauschenberg
Sally Gant

Printed by Hall Printing Company
High Point, North Carolina

Contents

Andrew and Robert McKim: Windsor Chair Makers 1

Giles Cromwell

The Mount Shepherd Pottery:

Correlating Archaeology and History 21

L. McKay Whatley

City Meets the Country:

the Work of Peter Eddleman, Cabinetmaker 59

Luke Beckerdite

Figure 1. Stair balustrade of the John Marshall House, Richmond, Virginia,
1789. Turned by Andrew McKim, according to an entry in John Marshall's
account book. Courtesy of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia
Antiquities. MESDA research file S-6515.

MESDA

Andrew and Robert McKim
Windsor Chair Makers

Giles Cromwell

The making of windsor chairs and the related trade of turn-
ing both have an interesting history in Richmond. In this article,
attention will be concentrated on the partnership of Andrew
and Robert McKim, perhaps the two leading craftsmen of their
trade in the city, during their period of joint work from 1795
through 1805. After Andrew's death in 1805, Robert continued
making windsor chairs at least until 1820.

Many of the business and domestic aspects of the McKims'
presence in Richmond are unknown, as might be expected,
though the difficulty of establishing their trade, either indi-
vidually or collectively, before the early 1790s remains difficult.
Andrew McKim, however, does appear in the personal tax rec-
ords of the city by July, 1789, when he was taxed for three male
tithables.1 Also, in August, 1789, the Directors of the Public
Buildings in Richmond authorized payment of eighteen shill-
ings to him for turning six ornaments, as yet unidentified, for
the new capitol.2 He was also sufficiently well-established by
November of this same year to have supplied the stair balustrade
for the nearly completed John Marshall House at 818 East
Marshall Street, charging £ 2: 17:6 for the work.3 This balustrade
(Fig. 1) represents the only known example of Andrew's work
other than his chairs and, with its component parts of newel-
post, balusters, and hand rail, demonstrates the importance of
the turner and his lathe in both furniture construction and
architectural finish work. The lower turning in the vasiform
design of the balusters is also present in certain labeled windsor
chairs with vasiform turned legs.

May, 1980 1

In 1792, Andrew McKim acquired several pieces of property
within the city. On February 20, 1792, he made an indenture
with James Ternan, an apothecary with substantial real estate
holdings, for vacant property on lot 365, measuring 40 feet wide
by 78 feet deep, facing Main Street between 11th and 12th
Streets in Madison Ward.4 In May of the same year, he acquired
from Ninian Wise an additional piece of property in the same
general area measuring 49 feet wide by 78 feet deep.5 Andrew's
third real estate purchase in 1792 was a joint purchase with
William McKim, a carpenter, and Robert McKim (all assumed
to be family, and probably brothers) on lot 4 14 in Madison
Ward, and this third purchase was located only two blocks west
of his previous purchases. Lot 414 fronted the south side of Main
Street between 9th and 10th Streets.6 A proximity between
Andrew's later residence on lot 365, on which construction
began by 1794, and a later chair shop and rental property on lot
414 began to be established by the end of 1792.

Robert McKim 's first recorded individual real estate pur-
chase took place on August 28, 1794, when he acquired vacant
property on lot 513 in Monroe Ward.7 This property, however,
was not as accessible to the McKim shop, and the author
believes they both shared the same living and working area on
lot 365 during construction of Andrew's brick three-story house,
which was finished and insured for $3,000 in February 1796.8
This residence measured 40 feet wide by 32 feet deep, and
apparently it was from this location that Andrew and Robert
first advertised in April and December of 1795 that they had
copies of The Young Millwright and Miller s Guide by Oliver
Evans, in addition to an assortment of the best German bolting
cloth for sale, and that they were located "... a small distance
above the Post-Office. "9 The term "chair shop" does not
appear in the advertisement. Actually, their partnership had
been formed early in April of 1795 when they were first jointly
listed in the personal property tax records, and by July 27, 1796,
they were jointly taxed for six white and one black tithables.10

The first advertisement specifically referring to Andrew's
and Robert's Windsor chair shop as a place of business appeared
on October 5, 1796, in The Virginia Gazette and the General
Advertiser when they stated that "Andrew & Robert
M'Kim,/A/ their Windsor Chair Shop /Have an Assortment of
German /Boulting Cloths,/. . ."n Their chair shop was located
on lot 4 14 at the corner of Main or E Street and 10th Street (Figs.

2 MESDA

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Figure 3- An enlarged portion of the Young map. The McKims' chair shop was
located on lot 414, at the corner of E Street and 10th. The Virginia Manu-
factory of Arms may also be seen near the James River. Courtesy the Virginia
State Library, Map Collection, Archives Branch.

2 and 3). The shop probably faced Main Street, which was the
primary thoroughfare. However, 10th Street was a principal
street, leading to and from the canal basin area, and would have
been an equally important route. That the shop fronted on
Main Street is further substantiated by an advertisement in The
Enquirer on November 30, 1813, in which J. H. Lynch, an
auctioneer, offered at public sale a tenement on E [Main] Street
"... and opposite Mr. Ro. McKim's Shop ..." Regardless of
which direction the shop faced, the northeast corner of lot 4 14
was a very strategic and necessary location for the merchandising
of windsor chairs and other general items to the public.

By June, 1797, they were listed in the Maryland Journal 'in
Baltimore, along with other individuals, as having "elevator
buckets," probably for grain silos, and were taking applications
for Oliver Evans' millstones in Philadelphia. There was no
reference to their trade as chairmakers, however.

One chair form which may have been made during this early
period of their partnership is illustrated (Fig. 4) as a labeled fan-

MESDA

Figure 4. A labeled side chair by the McKim shop, 1 795-1803, poplar seat with
base turnings of maple, spindles and crest of hickory. 32V2 " HO A, seat height
15 'U ", seat width I6V2 ", seat depth 15 V2 " . Painted dark green. Private collec-
tion. MESDA research file S-6855.

May, 1980

back Windsor side chair. Its well-tattered label bears the copy:

ANDREW & ROB* McKIM

makes every kind of

WINDSOR CHAIRS

In the neatest and best manner, in their

Chair Shop near the Post Office

RICHMOND

Another virtually identical chair having the same label has been
examined. The chair illustrated here retains much of its original
dark green paint, as does the matching chair. In both examples,
the leg tenons pierce the seats and are wedged; the back stiles
are pinned to the crest rails. As noted earlier, the lower sections
of the vasiform turnings of the legs duplicate a portion of the
1789 Marshall House balustrade turnings. Although these turn-
ings are a standard architectural form commonly used on Wind-
sors, they represent here a rare glimpse of a turner's trade
applied outside his normal trade of seating furniture produc-
tion. Numerous other southern chairmakers also turned stair
balusters, no doubt, but their work of this nature is seldom
identified.

The McKims' business continued to prosper during 1797,
and sometime during this year they began construction of a
large brick two-story building (Fig. 5) on lot 414 south of the
shop. This structure actually was two individual tenements con-
sisting of two apartments each. Each tenement measured 22 feet
wide by 37 feet 8 inches deep and faced 10th Street. By February
20, 1798, the construction of the large building had progressed
to where Andrew and Robert each felt the need to insure his
own respective tenement for $2,333. 12 Interestingly enough,
while their tenements were insured, the chair shop, which was
the McKims' principal place of business, evidently was not
covered by any insurance.

Andrew continued to reside at his house on lot 365 on the
north side of Main Street, the new tenement house with its two
apartments serving as rental property for him. Robert, however,
chose to occupy the second floor apartment of his new tenement
as his permanent residence and rented the first floor apartment
on the street. Following the trend toward business diversifi-
cation by many artisans in the post-Revolutionary period, the
McKims must have found it necessary to spend considerable

6 MESDA

MAIN (E) STREET

428

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SCALE

Figure 5. Conceptual plan of building placement on lot 41 4 from 1795 to
1816, gleaned from Mutual Assurance Society policies.

A. Andrew and Robert McKims' chair shop (1795-1805) until the former's
death and then occupied by Robert until destroyed by fire in 1816. The shop
dimensions are unknown but probably did not exceed approximately 18 x 18
feet.

B. Robert McKim 's brick two-story tenement 22 feet x 57 feet 8 inches sep-
arated from the chair shop by a 6 foot wide alley.

C. Andrew McKim 's brick two-story tenement 22 feet x 37 feet 8 inches con-
tiguous to Robert's tenement. These two tenements were also destroyed by the
fire which spread from the chair shop in 1816.

time managing their respective real estate holdings within the
city. From 1798 through early 1816, various tenants would
occupy these apartments including Ladd Anthony and Corn-

May, 1980

pany, Alexander McKim (a carpenter), William Nimmo,
George Mrasse, Virginia Ratcliff (a mantua or dressmaker), and
Allen Pollock and Company. Also, the Daily Compiler
newspaper office leased one apartment, and its publisher, L. H.
Girardian, occupied another. The post office also used space in
the building.

The first recorded notice of several runaways from the
McKims appeared in March, 1798, when they advertised for an
apprentice lad who had left in January, and an offer of 18 pence
was announced for his return,13 although it isn't known whether
or not he was returned. On June 1, 1799, one Holt Pannell
apprenticed himself to the McKims, and his employment once
again brought their tithables to five white and one black males
over sixteen years old. This might be considered an average
number of artisans generally associated with the McKim shop
during the 1795-1805 period. The terms of Pannell' s appren-
ticeship read:

Holt Pannell doth voluntarily and of his own free will
and accord put himself apprentice to Andrew and Robert
McKim Windsor Chair makers and turners Richmond to
learn their trade and mystery . . . for 3 yr.s & 7 months,
NB. The above Andrew & Robert McKim agree to give
the above Holt Pannell a suit of freedom clothes.14

Paralleling the McKims' career in Richmond during this
period was the construction of the Virginia Manufactory of Arms
(Fig. 6) at the end of 5th Street between the Kanawha Canal
and the James River. Authorized by the General Assembly in
1798, this institution produced all of the weapons for the state's
militia from 1802 through 182 1." The principal suppliers of the
timber for the interior of this armory were William and Alex-
ander McKim, presumably brothers of Andrew and Robert, and
being carpenters, William and Alexander, along with several
other carpenters, constructed the framing and other general
work in this building. As turners, Andrew and Robert likewise
played an interesting role in the establishment of the armory by
supplying large quantities of various sizes of rollers, cogs, and
pulleys for the armory's water-powered machinery. More specif-
ically, and of particular importance to this study, is the fact that
in 1802 they also supplied six windsor chairs and "2 tall Stools"
for Superintendent John Clarke's office in the building. They

8 MESDA

Figure 6. The "View from Gambles Hill, " Richmond, showing the Virginia
Manufactory of Arms, the lithograph taken from a drawing by the German
landscape artist, Edward Beyer, ca. 1840. The McKims furnished machinery
parts for the armory and seating furniture for the superintendent 's office in
1802. Courtesy the Virginia State Library.

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Figure 7. John Clarke's voucher regarding payment to Andrew and Robert
McKim for materials and Windsor furniture supplied to the Virginia Manufac-
tory of Arms in 1802. Courtesy the Virginia State Library, Archives Branch.

May, 1980

received $20.87 (Fig. 7) for these items and furnishings.16
Unfortunately, the designs of these armory furnishings are
unknown, but the labeled sack-back side chair (Fig. 8)
represents another McKim chair form produced during the
period, one which could have been used at the armory. The
label reads:

ANDW & ROB* M'KIM

Windsor Chair-Makers

Near the POST-OFFICE

RICHMOND

The simplified label may indicate that this piece was produced
during a later period of their partnership after the more detailed
labels had been discontinued. This chair has the same seat form
as the stylistically earlier fan-back side chairs, including a gouge-
cut incised line defining the back-spindle "table" at the rear of
the seat. The vasiform legs and swelled stretchers of the base
duplicate the fan-back chairs, just as the construction of the base
does, making it difficult to separate this chair chronologically
from the fan-backs without the labeling differential and the use
of bamboo-turned back spindles.17 The label of this example, in
fact, is imprinted with a guilloche border identical to the earlier
label, at least indicating that the McKims bespoke their printing
in the same shop when a new label was required.

Sharing the same label (Fig. 10), but with fully-developed
bamboo turnings throughout, is another sack-back side chair
(Fig. 9). Like the chair in Fig. 8, this example has a somewhat
exaggerated break in the curve of the back, just above where the
back joins the seat, a feature which appears to be consistent
among the McKim chairs studied18 and may represent some-
thing of a "signature" of the shop's work. Also, like the chair in
Fig. 8, this example has a seven-spindle back, with four spindles
— two on each side of the center spindle — piercing the back
rail. Although this chair represents a slightly later style in its
base turnings, there is little to actually suggest that it can be
dated significantly later than its vasiform-leg counterpart.

Yet another labeled McKim chair, and one which serves as a
barometer of shifting styles in the McKim shop at the beginning
of the 19th century, is a rare writing-arm chair with a drawer
(Fig. 11). The label used on this example (Fig. 12) represents a
third label form used by the McKim brothers and has the

10 MESDA

Figure 8. Labeled sack-back side chair by the McKims, 1793-1803, poplar seat
with base turnings of maple, spindles and back of hickory. HO A 33 }A".
Re finished. Private collection. MESDA research file S-3773.

May, 1980

Figure 9. Labeled sack- back side chair by the McKims, 1793-1803, poplar seat
with base turnings of maple except for a yellow pine center stretcher; spindles
and back of hickory. HO A 37 'A", seat height 11 ''A", seat width 17", seat
depth 133A". Painted black with yellow-penciled "joint" turnings. MESDA
accession 3163.

MESDA

>
.1 '

I. |p . .a lor Chair-Makers

r ■ s. -v?ail

Figure 10. Label of the McKim chair in Fig. 9; the imprint duplicates the label
used on the chair in Fig. 8.

unusual feature of having blank spaces provided for adding the
date of production, which reads on this example "May 31,
1802. ' ' The broad rectangular section of the crest and upper sec-
tions of the back stiles, along with the squared form of the back,
relate the chair somewhat to the Sheraton style. The solid stance
of the chair provided by the broad rake of the legs is augmented
by the excellent proportions which the indented seat helps to
provide. The left indentation is actually extended as a har-
monious "outrider" to support the writing-arm spindles. The
tenons of both arms completely pierce the back stiles. Like
earlier McKim chairs, both inner and outer edges of the back
stiles are molded, though here the treatment is extended to the
edges of the arms, writing surface, and seat. In all, the chair
follows a sophisticated urban style that is generally better
developed than much other surviving Richmond chair produc-
tions of the same period.

The continued production of chairs coupled with increased
demands placed on the McKims' trade by the needs of the
Virginia Manufactory necessitated a continual employment of
new apprentices, and in April, 1804, the court ordered that
"... the overseers of the poor of this City bind out according

May, 1980

Figure 11. Labeled writing- arm chair by the McKims, dated 1802. Woods not
analyzed. HO A 37 W , seat height 173A ", seat width 24", seat depth 17V4 ",
writing arm 18W x 29}M ". Re finished; originally painted red. MESDA acces-
sion 3182. Photo courtesy the H. F. duPont Winterthur Museum.

to law to Andrew and Robert McKim (windsor chair-makers)
Pleasant Willis orphan of Pleasant Willis deceased till he attains
the age of twenty one years, the Court adjudging him to be six-
teen years of age on the eleventh of May next."19. Unfortu-
nately, Andrew would not live to see this apprenticeship com-
pleted, for late in 1805, probably during December, he died
leaving two orphaned children himself, Mary Ann and Andrew,
Jr. Robert and Alexander McKim were the administrators of his
estate. His effects were appraised by William McKim, Robert
Hyde, John P. Shields, William Pointer (also a Richmond Wind-
sor chairmaker), and William Derrough at a total value of
$628.74. Included among his personal effects were listed ten
windsor chairs valued at one dollar each20. The administrators

MESDA

Figure 12. Label of the McKim chair illustrated in Fig. 11. Photo courtesy the
H. F. duPont Winterthur Museum.

placed the following notice in both The Virginia Argus and The
Enquirer on January 21, 1806:

Sale at Auction
Will be sold at Public Auction, on Tuesday the 28th inst.
at the late dwelling house of Andrew McKim, deceased,
all his Household & Kitchen Furniture & one valuable
Cow. Terms of sale - cash for all sums under ten dollars,
for all over that sum nine months credit will be allowed,
on giving bond and approved security.
Richmond, Jan. 17, 1806 Robert McKim

N.B. The House of the Alex'r McKim

deceased to be rented. Adm'rs.

Among the items sold at the above sale were the six Windsor
chairs to L. W. Grace for $1.75 each and the remaining four to
T. B. Burling for $1.00 each. The total amount of this sale
amounted to $422.4l.21 Thus, an interesting and quite produc-
tive partnership of ten years (1795-1805) ended, and extant
examples made by the partners are scarce. Hopefully additional
pieces and new forms, particularly the elusive arm chairs and
possibly settees, will be recognized. All of the McKims' pieces
deserve recognition not only as products of identifiable

May, 1980

tradesmen, but, equally important, these examples un-
mistakenly convey through their simplicity and durability the
art of windsor chair making in the South.

Robert McKim continued making windsor chairs for many
years after Andrew's death, and while no labeled examples have
been located for inclusion with this article, presumably their
forms initially followed those designs successfully produced
during his partnership with Andrew. Robert was elected as an
alderman from Madison Ward in 1811 and continued to receive
apprentices.22 In 1813, he took William R. Wood, who was the
brother of an earlier apprentice, Alexander H. Wood. Alex-
ander and several other apprentices, however, ran away from
McKim in March, 1815, and his advertisement for their return
stated that the apprentices had learned a "pretty general
knowledge" of the trade of windsor chair making and turning
and that Wood particularly had acquired the art of gilding and
ornamental painting.23 In 1814, Robert was unanimously
appointed as the sole representative of his trade to draft a consti-
tution for forming a new "Benevolent Mechanical Society" in
Richmond.24

McKim 's business suffered a series of devastating fires in ear-
ly 1816. The first fire destroyed his lumber house, and then on
the evening of February 16, his stable was destroyed. This last
fire endangered, but did not harm, his tenements. On the even-
ing of March 5 around eight o'clock, a third fire engulfed his
chair shop. This fire, the work of an arsonist, just as the previous
ones were, was well reported in The Daily Compiler's account of
March 9, 1816, which stated in part:

The workshop of Mr. Robert McKim, Chair-Maker,
already was a prey to the devouring element . . . and that
shop was almost in contact with the tenement partly
occupied by us . . . The tenement consisting of two
houses, appropriated to the Post-Office, to the establish-
ment of the Daily Compiler, and to the residence of two
families, that of Mr. Robert McKim, and that of L. H.
Girardian, being constructed of brick, and covered with
shingles, resisted for a while the power of the flames. The
whole, therefore, ultimately shared the fate of the shop
where the fire commenced.

In addition, The Enquirer on March 6 reported in part:

16 MESDA

This is the 4th alarm that the Post Office and the Com-
piler have had within the last 6 months. The 3rd within
the last month. Mr. McKim has lost both his houses; the
materials of his trade; and much of his furniture materi-
ally injured . . . Mr. McKim had locked up his shop this
evening with his own hands — no fire was left within,
and he was from home when the fire burst forth — What
a heart must that human being be cursed with, who
could thus plot a succession of villanies, fraught as these
were with aggravated disasters to a worthy and amiable
man.25

The seriousness of these fires prompted the city's mayor, John
G. Gamble, to offer a $500 reward in The Virginia Argus for the
arsonist's capture and conviction. Naturally, many citizens
immediately increased their insurance, fearing for their own
properties.26 Local concern may have been abated by a report,
admittedly based somewhat on hearsay, appearing in the
American Beacon and Commercial Diary from Norfolk on July
31, 1816, that a mulatto man named Billy Blue had been hung
in Philadelphia after having been detected while attempting to
burn part of that city. The report continued that Blue had con-
fessed to having been the destroyer of Mr. McKim's houses in
Richmond. Certain discrepancies, however, may have invali-
dated this story.

Regardless of the financial distress and inconvenience
brought about by these fires, Robert apparently lost little time
re-establishing himself in the city. He began construction almost
immediately of both a new house for his family and also three
new tenements all on lot 4 14, one of which probably served par-
tially as his new chair shop. Construction had progressed such
that by January 2, 1817, he insured his new, unfinished brick
three-story house, measuring 22 feet wide by 38 Vi feet deep, for
$3,500. This new house was located south of his new tenements
and faced 10th Street.27 Also during this month, he insured two
of his new tenements for $3,000 each, and the third new
building for $3,500. These three buildings, also brick three-
story with slate roofs, faced Main Street (Fig. 13).28

One of the last references to Robert McKim found was his
account of April 1820 against "... the Corporation of Rich-
mond amounting to $64 for 12 chairs with stuffed seats furnish-
ed by him for the use of this [Husting] Court, allowed &

May, 1980 17

MAIN (E) STREET

LU
UU
DC
I-
C/)

CT>

428

414

E F G

427

413

\-
(f)

I
H
O

CAREY (D) STREET

Figure 13- Conceptual plan of building placement on lot 41 4 from 1817 to

1822, gleaned from Mutual Assurance Society policies.

D. Robert McKtm 's brick three -story house covered with slate 22 feet x 38 feet

6 inches built after the 1816 fire.

E-G. Three contiguous brick three-story tenements covered with slate built by

Robert after the 1816 fire, and one of them, probably "G" contained his new

chair shop. Building "E" dimensions 26 x 40 feet; buildings "F" and "G"

both had dimensions 20 feet 6 inches x 40 feet.

ordered to be paid by Chamberlain."29 No obituary or public
sale of McKim's effects have been located, though there is a
reference to Robert's "estate" in the Personal Property Tax Lists
for 1823, so presumably he died sometime during the preceding
year.

MESDA

Mr. Cromwell, a student of southern furniture and the author of The
Virginia Manufactory of Arms, lives in Richmond, Virginia, and is a
distillers ' representative for the state.

FOOTNOTES

1. Richmond City, Personal Property Tax Lists 1787-1799, Positive Reel N.
Ill, for July 1789.

2. Capitol Square Date, Auditor's Item 137, Vouchers 201-304, 1789-1790,
voucher no. 280, for Aug. 5, 1789.

3. The Papers of John Marshall, 2 vols., Charles T. Cullen and Herbert A.
Johnson, editors, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, in
association with the Institute of Early American History and Culture,
Williamsburg, Virginia, 1977, vol. 2, p. 11.

4. Richmond City, Hustings Deeds, Grantee Book No. 2, p. 23, for Feb. 20,
1792.

5. Ibid., p. 21, for May 8, 1792.

6. Ibid., p. 21, for Oct. 22, 1792.

7. Ibid., p. 120, for Aug. 28, 1794.

8. Mutual Assurance Society, Richmond, Volume 12, Policy No. 20, Feb.
1796.

9. The Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser, Richmond, April 22, Dec.
16, Dec. 18, 1795.

10. Richmond City, Personal Property Tax Lists 1787-1799, Positive Reel No.
Ill, for April 11, 1795 and July 27, 1796.

11. The Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser, Richmond, Oct. 5, 1796.

12. Mutual Assurance Society, Richmond, Volume 13, Policy Nos. 267 and
268, Feb. 20, 1798.

13. The Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser, Richmond, April 31, 1798.

14. Richmond City, Hustings Deeds, Grantee Book No. 2, p. 586, for June
1, 1799; Richmond City, Hustings Court Order Book No. 4, p. 292, June
10, 1799.

15. Giles Cromwell, The Virginia Manufactory of Arms (Univ. Press of
Virginia, 1975), 208 pp.

16. Vouchers and Miscellaneous Papers, Va. Mfg. of Arms, 1785-1864, box
no. 1, for Mar. 18, 1803, Accession no. 13239, auditor's item no. 217;
Virginia State Library.

17. The author knows of another Andrew and Robert McKim sack-back Wind-
sor side chair which has plain (i.e., lacks any bamboo motif) tapered back
spindles and has vasiform legs and swelled stretchers. This chair has not
been personally examined but probably represents yet another proper
variant of the form.

18. The author has also inspected a pair of labeled McKim chairs in The
Valentine Museum Collection, Richmond, Va. which are identical both as
to label wording and overall construction and design to the chair il-

May, 1980 19

lustrated in (Fig. 8). The Valentine pair, in addition to these chairs (Figs.
8 and 9), have this inward bend of their bow backs occurring distinctively
up from where the backs enter the seats. The average dimensions of this
pair are: H. 37 1/2 inches, W. (front legs) 21 inches, Seat: W. i73/s inches,
D. 1 5 3/4 inches.

19. Richmond City, Hustings Court Order Book, Book No. 5, p. 438, for
April 11, 1804.

20. Ibid., Book No. 6, p. 328, for Jan. 13, 1806; Richmond City, Hustings
Deeds, Book No. 5, p. 413, for Jan. 15, 1806.

21. Richmond City, Hustings Deeds, Book No. 5, p. 415, for Jan. 28, 1806.

22. The Virginia Argus, Richmond, April 8, 1811, and April 6, 1812.

23. By October 1817, both Alexander H. and William R. Wood had estab-
lished a windsor chair shop on the corner of Market and Spring Streets in
Nashville, Tennessee, and by 1819 they had expanded their trade to in-
clude sign and ornamental painting at their new location next to D.
Robertson's Book Store in Nashville. Source: Clarion and Tennessee State
Gazette. Nashville, Oct. 7, 1817; The Nashville Whig and Tennessee
Advertiser, Oct. 6, 1817; also for Jan. 31, 1818, May 1, 1819, and Aug. 7,
1819; The Nashville Gazette, June 12, 1819.

24. Virginia Argus, Richmond, June 15, 1814.

25. This catastrophe was also recorded in the Norfolk Gazette and Publick
Ledger, Virginia, Mar. 9, 1816; the Norfolk & Portsmouth Herald, Mar.
11, 1816; The Enquirer, Richmond, Mar. 6, 1816; Alexandria Gazette,
Commercial and Political, Virginia, Mar. 9, 1816.

26. Mutual Assurance Society, Richmond, Volume 53, Policy No. 554, Mar.
9, 1816.

27. Ibid., Volume 54, Policy No. 716, Jan. 2, 1817.

28. Ibid., Volume 54, Policy No. 809, Jan. 2, 1817. The new tenements
measured 20 Vi feet by 40 feet deep, and the third new building 24 Vi feet
by 40 feet deep.

29. Richmond City, Hustings Court Order Book No. 7, p. 364, April 20,
1820.

The author particularly extends his appreciation for assistance with
this article to the following at MESDA: Frank L. Horton, Director;
Bradford L. Rauschenberg, Research Fellow; John Bivins, Jr., Director
of Publications. The author also wishes to acknowledge the kind
assistance of Elizabeth Taylor Childs, Curator of Collections, Valen-
tine Museum, Richmond; Fran Richardson, E. M. Sanchez-Saavedra,
and Catherine Smith, Head of Public Service, Virginia State Library,
Richmond, Virginia, for their interest and suggestions. The author
further thanks A. Baylor Cromwell, Mr. and Mrs. Ed LaFond, and
Mrs. Nancy Goyne Evans of Winterthur for their assistance.

20 MESDA

The Mount Shepherd Pottery:
Correlating Archaeology and History

L. McKay Whatley

In recent decades, most students of early ceramics in this
country have come to agree that the products of long vanished
potteries cannot be examined in an exhaustive manner without
bringing to bear every research tool possible. In ceramic analysis,
this means that both archaeology and historical research, work-
ing together, are necessary to bring forth all of the information
possible about a pottery site. Either documentation or excavated
material is necessary to establish provenance, and provenance,
to a great extent, provides legitimacy to an otherwise question-
able artifact.

North Carolina has been blessed with a long and usually
fruitful marriage between historical archaeology and primary
research. One particularly outstanding example is the mid- 18th
century Moravian settlement of Bethabara, which was exten-
sively excavated by Stanley South and a team of State archaeolo-
gists in the 1960s. The net result of the Bethabara dig, in combi-
nation with an exhaustive examination of records in the
Moravian Archives, has been a very successful interpretation of
life in a once thriving pioneer Moravian town. Particularly
significant in the Bethabara project were two pottery sites exca-
vated, the first established in 1756 by the potter Gottfried Aust
and the second operated in the late 1780s by Aust's former
apprentice, Rudolf Christ. Both of these potters later worked in
the town of Salem, established in 1766, six miles from Betha-
bara. In studying the work of these men, archaeological evi-
dence was used to flesh out the historical documentation and to
provide sound identification of intact surviving ceramics in the

May, 1980 21

collection of Old Salem, Incorporated. A ceramic typology for
the Moravian wares was established, providing a detailed study
of what may well be considered the most complex earthenware
tradition in 18th-century America.

Winston-Salem

Randolph County

NC f—f^l • Raleigh

1 -\sheboro

Mount Shepherd Site

Figure 1. Location of the Mount Shepherd pottery site.

Two years after the excavation of the Bethabara potteries,
another important 18th- century North Carolina pottery site was
discovered in Randolph County, some fifty miles southeast of
the Moravians' Wachovia Tract. The new site, however, pro-
vided a strong contrast with the Bethabara dig in that the
archaeology was carried out initially without historical context.
Little or nothing was known of the history of the site, so the
recovered artifacts were divorced from a confident provenance.
Since the discovery of the new site, and its subsequent excava-
tion, a painstaking process of reconstructing the documentary
background of the site has provided answers to a good number
of archaeological questions regarding the site.

This site, now generally known as the Mount Shepherd Pot-
tery, is located in north-central Randolph County, eight miles
northwest of the present city of Asheboro (Fig. 1). Situated in a
steep, hilly terrain, the site is actually in the Uwharrie mountain
range; the large hills in the area are the worn remainders of what
is geologically considered to be the oldest mountain range in the
western hemisphere. The well-traveled "Trading Path," which
had been used for commerce before the 1750s, and earlier yet by
the Indians, crossed the county within a half-mile of the pottery
site on its course southwestward through the state.

Randolph County has long been known as one of the early

22 MESDA

centers of pottery making in North Carolina, so the discovery of
the Mount Shepherd site in 1968 promised considerable signifi-
cance to the study of local ceramics. Long held oral tradition in
the area has suggested that English potters from the Stafford-
shire district had settled in Randolph in the mid- 18th century;
the first of these potters is said to have been Peter Craven. Other
families of potters, such as the Coles and Foxes, appear in coun-
ty records by the end of the 18th-century. Members of the Beard
and Dicks families are known to have been potting in northwest
Randolph as early as the 1790s, and initial conjecture suggested
that one of them may have established the Mount Shepherd
site. Because of strong local tradition, it was naturally assumed
that the pottery site was linked with English ceramic tradition.
When the existence of the pottery was brought to the atten-
tion of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Auman of Seagrove, both potters
and proprietors of the Seagrove Pottery Museum in the southern
part of the county, the Aumans began an energetic drive to
bring attention to the site. With the assistance of the Mint
Museum in Charlotte, N.C., the Aumans formed an association
called "North Carolina Historical Potters Exploration, Inc."
This organization sponsored an archaeological test of the site in
1971, followed by the hiring of an archaeologist and excavation
of the site in the summer of 1974. In the initial work, a kiln and
various related features were excavated; during the following
summer, 1975, much of the remainder of the site was un-
earthed. In 1980, the site was placed on the National Register of
Historic Places.

The pottery site lies on the crest of a small ridge at the foot
of Mount Shepherd, bordered by two intermittent creeks, which
are part of the Uwharrie River watershed. A six-foot high wire
fence was installed to protect the areas of major surface scatter
and visible archaeological remains. Four low mounds and several
shallow pits were originally visible, overlaid — as is the majority
of the site — with a film of exposed pottery shards generated
during the occupation. Adjacent to the north is a camp
caretaker's residence, separated from the site by a gravel access
road which forms part of the western boundary of a 600-acre
camp. In the 1960s, the area between the site and the road was
bulldozed to provide space for a garden.

For about 100 years, beginning in the 1820s, the area be-
tween Shepherd's Mountain and the Uwharrie River was known
as the "Hoover Hill" community, named after the Hoover Hill

May, 1980 23

Gold Mine. The mine was the most elaborate and lucrative such
operation in Randolph County, featuring tunnels more than
400 feet below ground. Open shaft entrances are visible today
less than a quarter mile from the pottery site, but the surround-
ing boom-town neighborhood of houses, shops, church and
industry has completely vanished. Consequently, much of the
history of the area is unknown to local residents or is so fragmen-
tary as to assume an almost mythological character. It was of
little surprise that older inhabitants could not recall hearing of a
pottery at the site. Although deed research was begun by Mrs.
Lewis Grigg, a county historian, in an attempt to identify the
earliest owners of the property, results were so inconclusive that
all archaeological investigation was carried out in conjunction
with a complete lack of documentary evidence.

Figure 2. Excavated kiln base at the Mount Shepherd pottery site. Alain
Outlaw photograph.

MESDA

J. H. Kelly's October, 1971, test dig report on the site con-
cluded that "the importance of this site in relation to the
development of ceramics in America as a whole, and to North
Carolina in particular, cannot be overestimated."1 Based on the
findings of his three small test trenches, however, the impor-
tance of the site was in danger of being overstated. Excavated
material included glazed bricks, various earthenware shards
glazed in dark brown, yellow, and green, and assorted pieces of
kiln furniture such as a type of three-legged trivet, three inches
in diameter, terminating in short horizontal points. Foremost
among the finds were fragments of unglazed press-molded stove
tiles, with bold relief decorations, and a single decorated reed-
pipe head.

Only the latter was definitely related by Kelly to material
excavated by Stanley South at the Gottfried Aust pottery site in
Bethabara, even though the stove tiles excavated were also ob-
viously similar to Moravian products. With the Moravian rela-
tionship in mind, Kelly pointed out that "it must be born in
mind that . . . some [of the shards] may be domestic refuse
imported from other kiln sites. "2 It was felt at the time that the
English heritage of Randolph County was being unfairly
ignored in favor of the more thoroughly examined Moravian
tradition.

In June, 1974, the "Historical Potters Exploration" hired
Alain Outlaw, an archaeologist with the Virginia Historic Land-
marks Commission, to supervise a volunteer group of exca-
vators. In a month of intensive effort, two major areas of the site
were exposed. Excavation of one 15 ' x 8 ' mound revealed a well
preserved, five-flued circular kiln (Fig. 2) filled with ashes and a
multitude of utilitarian earthenware shards.3 It was surmised
that the kiln had collapsed during its final firing, destroying the
load of coarse hollow ware crocks or "cream pots" inside and
leading to the abandonment of the site.

Another mound disclosed an unusual brick foundation
which was originally thought to be a chimney base. Associated
with this feature was a mass of fragments of Moravian style stove
tiles. These were of two types: a rectangular tile featuring a
soldier posed at attention (subsequently called the
"Minuteman") and a square tile showing a man on horseback
(subsequently called the "Dragoon") (Fig. 4). Shards of a type
of utilitarian redware bowl were found, measuring about 10 Vi
inches in diameter, with strong everted rims below which lay
thickened external ribs (Fig. 17). As for kiln furniture, more

May, 1980 25

trivets were produced, as well as unusual, straight-sided pipe
saggers. These were crude circular vessels with bottoms perfor-
ated to accept removable clay pins. Glazed pipe heads were in-
verted on these pins to simplify the process of firing.

workshop

MOUNT SHEPHERD
POTTERY SITE

preliminary mop 1979

cloy pit

Figure 3- Site plan of the Mount Shepherd pottery, showing the kiln base,
waster pit, and remaining building foundations. Prepared by Alain Outlaw.

Dateable material included a fragment of a Rhenish
stoneware bottle not generally imported to America after the
Revolution and thus indicating a general 18th-century date. A
more important find was a shard of plate rim glazed with
manganese and copper stippling. The technique is identical to
one introduced to the Moravian town of Salem in 1773 by the
visiting English potter William Ellis and is commonly associated
with the English potter Thomas Whieldon, though many others
used it. This find therefore implied that the site could not have

MESDA

been occupied before the 1771-1773 period, when this type of
glaze was introduced to North Carolina. Whether the piece was
an accidental introduction from Salem or a product of the
Mount Shepherd kiln was not immediately apparent.

Figure 4. Two stove tiles from the Mount Shepherd site, in the biscuit state,
6V4 " x 8W (left) and 3% " .v 6V2 " (right). The presence of carbon inside the
tiles indicates they are from a stove in use at the pottery site. Btvins photo-
graph.

In the summer of 1975, a grant from the North Carolina
Bicentennial Commission enabled the Potters Exploration to
rehire Outlaw and to conduct an on-site field school. This was
done in cooperation with Dr. David McLean of St. Andrews
Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, N.C. The three-month
operation excavated most of the remainder of the site, uncover-
ing fragmentary architectural foundations but no other kiln
related features. However, an outstanding collection of ceramic
artifacts was assembled. These included a cylindrical tankard
some three inches in diameter — the exterior glazed in a dark
iron color, the interior pale yellow — a variety of extruded
handles, several complete stove tiles, and a biscuit shard of a
negative tile mold. One of the most unusual features was a cir-
cular pit situated on the downslope side of the kiln. The pit had
been uncovered in 1974, but excavation had been delayed; in
1975 it disclosed what is thought to be a complete kiln load of

May, 1980

wasters. These included both slip decorated plates and utili-
tarian hollow ware. Some examples of an unusual wide
mouthed, two-handled jug form were found, with stubby taper-
ing handles terminating in a hollow thumb print. Evidently, the
pit had been filled by the simple process of throwing the ware
right out of the kiln loading door into the hole. It is hoped that
many of these shards can be completely reconstructed, giving a
good indication of the capacity of the kiln.

Figure 5. Bowl and plate shards from the Mount Shepherd site. The bowl
shards are in the biscuit state; both plate fragments are from the same piece
and are decorated with red and green slip over a white slip wash. The plate
diameter was extrapolated to 12". Bivins photograph.

Slip decorated ware included bowls decorated with a
"combed" slipware technique as well as a checkerboard pat-
tern. Some plates exhibited polychrome bands on the marly, or
rim (Fig. 5), while others combined multicolored baroque flour-
ishes with the familiar "seed-pod" motif. The latter has been
called "almost a signature of the Moravian potters in North
Carolina. ' '4 The cavetto decoration of these plates is unclear but
seems to have included various types of floral motifs and at least
one tulip design.

Small finds included rose-headed nails, brass buttons, and a

MESDA

single tiny silver cufflink, engraved with a figure of a running
fox and inscribed "TALLY O." A teacup (Fig. 6) was decorated
with the mottled "Whieldon" style glaze, again indicating a

Figure 6. A porcelain-form teacup from the Mount Shepherd site, decorated
with underglaze sponging of copper and manganese over a white slip wash.
Foot diameter 1 lM " . The foot ring was turned while the cup was in the leather-
hard state, following production techniques used by Salem potters. Bivtns
photograph.

post- 1773 date. Two coins were found; one, a well worn George
II halfpenny, indicated a post- 1760 date, while a Virginia half-
penny indicated a post- 1775 date. A shard of creamware (im-
ported after 1770), a fragment of English wine bottle glass, and
a penknife rounded out the collection.5

With the progress of each successive excavation and the
gathering of archaeological material, it became increasingly evi-
dent that some relationship existed between the potter working
at Mount Shepherd and the various Moravian potters working at
Salem and Bethabara. Soon the question was not "whether or
not" there was a relationship, but whether the potter was sim-
ply responding to the Moravian market, had actually lived and
trained in the Moravian community, or both. One 1799 Ran-
dolph County estate inventory listed "Moravian ware," so the
"name-recognition" value of the Salem wares was great. Con-
sideration of the Mount Shepherd material considerably compli-
cates the problems of attribution of Moravian style pottery. No

May, 1980 29

Wachovia forms such as teapots, lamps, sugar bowls, or jugs
have currently been identified from the Mount Shepherd exca-
vations, but otherwise there is a high correspondence between
the varieties of ware produced at both places.

Figure 7. Two anthropomorphic and one fluted pipe head from the Mount
Shepherd site, bowl heights 15A" . Bivins photograph.

The reed-stem tobacco pipes (Fig. 7) found at Mount Shep-
herd are very similar to one type found in the kiln waster dump
at Aust's first pottery site in Bethabara. Stanley South titled it
the "Anthropomorphic Fluted (with Ear) /Fleur-de-lis on
Stem." There are several minor differences between the two
pipes, but their common origin seems clear. The explanation for
this seems to lie in Pennsylvania, where an unidentified source,
probably in the Moravian settlement of Christian Spring, made
and sold pipe molds.7

Figure 8. Two pipes and their forms of brass (left) and pewter (right) represen-
tative of the numerous types produced by potters Aust and Christ.
MESDA/ Old Salem, Inc. research file S -207 9.

MESDA

The decorated ware at Mount Shepherd is also extremely
similar to Moravian examples. The "combed" and checkered
bowls have similar counterparts in Salem production. In cross-
section the Mount Shepherd plates are all but identical (Fig. 9)
to the shape of Wachovia plates of the 1755-90 period, with
pronounced everted or rolled rim, double boogc (back), and
foot. Another characteristic of most of the Mount Shepherd
plates is a very thin bottom. While the sides of the plate are
comparatively thick, the bottom must have been very fragile
and liable to break.

Figure 9. Section of a plate from the Mount Shepherd site, showing the heavy
everted rim characteristic of Moravian plates. Bivins photograph.

Figure 10. Slip-decorated plate shards from the Mount Shepherd site, the
outer fragments in the biscuit state. The "frond" decoration in green and
brown slip on the large center shard follows Aust decorative motifs. Bivins
photograph.

May, 1980

As mentioned earlier, the slip decoration of the plates (Fig.
10) is very closely related to Moravian examples (Fig. 11),
although no example found represents a duplicate, which would
in fact be unusual on such freehanded work. A fragmentary
tulip is seen on one of the few cavetto shards from the Mount
Shepherd excavation, and can be reconstructed to show a care-
fully-delineated, yet fluid representation of the flower.

Figure 11. Slip-decorated plate, 1770-1788, attributed to Gottfried Aust,
green and red slip over a white slip wash. The flower petals are a light gray, a
slip color virtually unknown on American pottery. Diameter 125A".
MESDA/ Old Salem, Inc. research file S-17 20.

Although none of the published photographs of Moravian
slip-decorated plates display tulips resembling the Mount Shep-
herd example, comparisons of the varying tulip designs might
provide an interesting method of distinguishing between the
hands of the many Moravian potters, journeymen, and appren-
tices.

The greatest differences and the least similarities occur in a
comparison of the Mount Shepherd and Wachovia stove tiles.
The primary similarity is the very existence of the Mount Shep-
herd tiles, for analysis has indicated that construction and use of
ceramic tile stoves was almost completely limited to Moravian
settlements in 18th-century America. Furthermore, the format

MESDA

A—

Figure 12. Detail of a four- pe tale d flower used as corner decoration on a
Mount Shepherd stove tile. Bivins photograph.

of the tiles is that of the Wachovia Moravians (square or rec-
tangular frame with corner motifs); the Pennsylvania Brethren
seem to have made use of different designs. In fact, the corner
motif (Fig. 12) of the Mount Shepherd tiles (a tiny floral design)
is identical to that of the Moravian "Spiral Flower" pattern used
for the stove in the 1788 Bethabara Gemeinhaus (Figs. 13, 13a).
A fragment of rope or cable molding (Fig. 14) found at Mount
Shepherd also relates to the Gemeinhaus stove, where it is used
to extend the surface area of the lowest row of tiles and increase
the size of the firebox. It may have functioned similarly on the
Mount Shepherd stove, although, inexplicably, no fragments of
bed or cornice-molding were excavated there.

When the Mount Shepherd tiles are examined in cross-
section, it is evident that they do not directly copy the form of
any Wachovia example. The "Minuteman" tile displays a
beaded cavetto molding and the "Dragoon" a simple ogee —
neither represented among the Moravian tiles. The Mount
Shepherd tiles were almost wholly original artistic conceptions.
Good quality impressions of the tiles indicate great subtlety in
the original design. Its execution exhibits modeling in deep,
clear relief by a craftsman of some experience and assurance.

The primary difference between the Moravian and Mount
Shepherd tiles is in subject matter. Moravian tiles depicted
floral, geometric, or abstract designs exclusively. More than any-
thing else, the design source of the Mount Shepherd tiles recalls
mainstream Pennsylvania-German culture, where this type of

May, 1980

Figure 13- Tile stove, in the biscuit state and blackened with stove polish,
attributed to Rudolf Christ; made for the Bethabara Gemein Haus, which was
completed in 1788. HOA 63", WOA 2VA", DOA 46W . MESDA/Old
Salem, Inc. research file S- 1418.

MESDA

militaristic motif seems to have been traditional subject matter.
The Pennsylvania potter David Spinner produced a complete
range of sgraffito plates with comparable treatments. One,
titled "Sholder Firelock," depicts two colonial soldiers standing
at attention; several versions of an equestrian motif exist. The
most striking comparisons to the "Dragoon" tile are several iron
stoves of the so-called "German Hunter" pattern, which seem
to indicate a strong link between the Mount Shepherd and
Pennsylvania motifs.8

Figure 13a. A biscuit tile mold and a stove tile of the same pattern as that
employed on the stove illustrated in Fig. 13- A corner fragment of a similar tile
mold was recovered at the Mount Shepherd site. The large face of the tile il-
lustrated is 7 '/a " x8W. MESDA/ Old Salem, Inc. research file S-2083.

Figure 14. A fragment of cable-molded stove base tile from the Mount Shep-
herd site; the cabling closely duplicates the same detail on the stove illustrated
in Fig. 13. 2'A " x 4'/2 ". Bivins photograph.

May, 1980

The Mount Shepherd kiln itself stands as perhaps the most
unusual discovery; material for an adequate structural compari-
son just does not exist. Very few kilns have been excavated in the
United States, and few of those exhibit similar characteristics.
As excavated, the kiln consists of an unmortared brick flue sys-
tem (Fig. 2) roughly nine feet in diameter, preserved to an
average height of about one foot. The five 9 Vi " wide flue chan-
nels radiate from a common center; all flues terminate in oval
ash pits. One flue on the southwest was blocked up at some time
by the potter, perhaps to improve heat distribution inside the
firing chamber. The kiln walls are of slate, averaging two feet in
thickness and mortared together with waster-tempered clay. The
existing walls seem to taper slightly toward the center, indicat-
ing that it was of a "bee-hive" or "bottle"9 design. The rough
stone exterior of the kiln was probably stuccoed with clay, as
large chunks were found exhibiting baked-in palm prints.

Little work has been done to reconstruct the kiln, although
adequate material seems available. One expert on kiln construc-
tion suggests that' "As a rule of thumb, each foot of horizontal
flue must be compensated for by two additional feet of chim-
ney."10 This could indicate that the kiln, nine feet in diameter,
was as much as eighteen feet in height. A close parallel to the
Mount Shepherd kiln was the Jessiah Diehl kiln near Quaker-
town, Pennsylvania, the plan of which was published in 1972. It
is an updraft "beehive" kiln built of fieldstone, lined with
brick, and reinforced with iron bands.11

Very little is known about North Carolina Moravian kilns.
Aust's kilns both in Bethabara and Salem were built inside a
small frame addition to the potter's shop. Although this situa-
tion was a never ending source of worry to the town's managing
board, no diarist ever managed to describe the kiln when com-
plaining about it in the records. A kiln has been found and ex-
cavated at Bethabara; however, it is a later kiln, in use by the
Butner family of potters as late as 1870. 12 It therefore seems
dangerous to relate that kiln, a "rectangular" type, to the prac-
tices of the 18th-century Moravian potters.

Coincidence, industrial espionage, apprenticeship — what
was the relationship between the Mount Shepherd potter and
the Moravian community? Perhaps the most telling piece of
evidence is the following: In the spring of 1788, an ailing Gott-
fried Aust journeyed to Pennsylvania for medical treatment. In
his absence, the Salem Aufseher Collegium directed that "to

36 MESDA

prevent confusion, the price of each piece of pottery shall be
burnt in . . . "13 This is the first recorded mention of a practice
that Aust seems to have followed previously; he had developed a
standard price for each piece of pottery which was keyed to a

Figure 15. Reverse view of a slip-decorated plate attributed to Gottfried Aust,
showing the potter's price marking. Utilitarian ware was generally marked in
Roman numerals. MESDAf Old Salem, Inc. research file S- 1777.

Roman numeral code scratched on the bottom of each pot (Fig.
15). Aust's apprentice, Christ, adopted a similar code. The
point of this digression is that Mount Shepherd hollow ware also
has a price code marked on its bottom — in Roman numerals
(Fig. 16). More than anything else, this fact suggested that the
Mount Shepherd potter's background included a working rela-
tionship — either as apprentice or journeyman — in the shop of
Gottfried Aust. Negative evidence suggests that the Mount
Shepherd potter had little or no professional contact with
Wachovia after Aust's death in 1788. Christ introduced both
faience and stoneware in Salem during the 1790s; neither
appears at the Randolph County site, nor do press-molded
animal bottles, introduced in Salem about 1800. The rough
chronological boundaries of activity at the Mount Shepherd site,
considering all evidence, are these: established after ca. 1775;
abandoned before ca. 1800.

Just who was the Mount Shepherd potter? If he was one of
the Randolph County English potters, then it would be surpris-

May, 1980 37

Figure 16. Cream- pot shards from the Mount Shepherd site, showing price
markings; in the biscuit state. Bivins photograph.

ing to find such close links to the Moravians in his work.
Although it would not have been impossible for an outsider to
have worked in Aust's pottery, it would have been unusual.14 If,
on the other hand, he was a Moravian apprentice, then how did
he stray so far from home? Although Moravians did live on the
periphery of the Wachovia tract, they were primarily farmers
who retained an active tie to the church.

The militaristic motifs of the stove tiles are also not in keep-
ing with the Moravian position against bearing arms. During
the Revolution the Salem diarist cautioned that "the guns
which are in town should not hang in sight, since we have cons-
cientious scruples against bearing arms."15 It does not seem
likely that a Moravian would design a tile featuring a soldier
with his musket.

An archaeological summary of the evidence found, then,
suggests the following:

1 . The pottery was active at sometime during the last quarter of
the 18th century.

2. The potter was a skilled master of the Moravian forms; an
outsider catering to the popular market could not have

MESDA

assimilated the style so completely. Stylistically, he seems to
have been an apprentice or journeyman in the shop of Gott-
fried Aust.

3. His familiarity with the "Wachovia vernacular" indicates
that the potter had his closest ties to the North Carolina
area, but some of his design motifs indicate possible links to
the Pennsylvania-German community.

4. If the potter was a former Moravian apprentice, then he had
left the Moravian community, either by choice or by circum-
stance.

The focus of historical inquiry into the Mount Shepherd pot-
tery, then, was an effort to connect a name to the plot of land on
which it lay. The initial procedure employed was to trace the
deed to the property from present owner to past owner to
original owner. An Asheboro lawyer's cursory deed search in-
dicated that the late 18th-century property owner had been a
Henry Yount. Local historians disagreed, however, as the
Younts, according to oral tradition, lived on the east side of the
mountains, not on the Uwharrie but on Caraway Creek.

This confusion obviously arose from the fact that the present
camp at the site was originally comprised of many smaller tracts
of land. For the purpose of this study, only with the discovery of
the owner of the exact spot where the pottery site stood could we
consider our search successful. The only reliable way to accom-
plish this task was to plot out the deeded legal boundaries of all
the adjoining tracts of land and to assemble all these small plats
together into one large plat map (Fig. 21). Then, to demon-
strably locate the site on a particular tract, the plat map had to
be related to a modern geodetic survey map by some known
benchmarks. Since 18th-century surveyors often used water-
courses as reference points, identifiable rivers or streams pro-
vided legitimate reference points.

Although such land research might seem like piecing
together a giant jigsaw puzzle, the process is actually a great deal
more complicated. Many 18th-century deeds are maddeningly
incorrect, or incomplete. Tracts of land must be traced through
three successive counties as boundaries change. Land granted by
the state was always recorded in the Secretary of State's office,
but the proud grantee often failed to register his deed in an
effort to escape taxes. Outrageously vague landmarks sometimes
defied relation to adjoining properties, to geographical land-
marks, or to common sense.

May, 1980 39

Over the course of several years' research, a map of 18th-
century property owners in the Uwharrie River section of Ran-
dolph County began to take shape. The first land taken up by
settlers was always productive river bottomland, so the map
slowly spread from watercourses toward the less fertile, and last
claimed, mountainous land. The final map was plotted at a
scale of one inch equal to 100 poles, or 1,650 feet (approxi-
mately V3 mile). It is keyed to the Rudolph Waymire tract front-
ing on the Uwharrie; the possibility of error increases with the
distance from that reference point. As far east as Caraway Creek,
the maximum possible error may be as much as 410 feet.

Figure 17. Bowl rim sections from the Mount Shepherd site. Bivins
photograph.

The pottery site at the western foot of Shepherd Mountain
(Fig. 21) can now be seen to lie almost in the center of a 100-acre
tract originally granted by the State of North Carolina in 1793.
The location of the site within this tract can be accepted with a
great degree of confidence, as even the maximum mapping
error does not push the site outside of its legal boundaries.
Could the 1793 grantee, the first original owner of the site, be
our unknown potter? Do the characteristics we have generated
by archaeological analysis apply to this man? To resolve these
questions entailed still more historical research: an investigation
into the background of the grantee, who was listed as Jacob
Myers.

Myers is mentioned in eight presently-known Randolph
County records, bracketing the period of his confirmed presence
in the county from October 1793, to November, 1799. The ma-

40 MESDA

jority of these are land grant records in the office of the North
Carolina Secretary of State. Myers does not appear in Randolph
County deed books, for he never seems to have registered his
land. Several types of property records remain, even so. The
land grant process had five basic steps. A claim to a tract of
vacant land would be "entered" with the county's Land Entry
Officer. Myers seemed to have come by the property at third
hand, for two previous claimants had previously sold off their
interest in the land. The exact date Myers bought the entry is
unknown.16 After the claim was established, a warrant for survey
was sent from the Entry Officer to the County Surveyor. The
County Surveyor would then arrive and survey the tract of land
in company with the claimant and interested neighbors. The
County Surveyor then drew up a survey plat of the land for state
records. The survey plat for the Jacob Myers claim was drawn up
October 18, 1793. 17 This is the earliest date which Myers can
positively be said to be living on the property, although he may
have been established there for some time. On receipt of the
survey plat, the state would draw up and issue a land grant to
the claimant, which he was then required to record with the
county Register of Deeds. It is unknown if and when Myers com-
pleted this process.

Figure 18. Bowl fragment from the Aust pottery site, Bethabara, 1756-1771,
glazed inside with a brown iron-oxide glaze. MESDA/ Old Salem, Inc. research
file S-1964.

May, 1980 41

During the survey process Myers must have found additional
vacant land adjoining his claim, for three days later, on October
21, he filed a second claim for 100 acres adjoining his former
entry.18 In January, 1795, two of Myers' neighbors entered
claims of vacant land and listed Jacob Myers as an adjoining
property owner.19 In March, 1796, the County Surveyor arrived
to survey Myers' second entry, but Myers transferred the warrant
"for value received," to a Samue/ Myers.20 The 100 acres of land
was accordingly surveyed and granted to Samuel Myers.21 At the
time the entry was found, the relationship between the two
Myers was open to question. Beyond the similarity of their
names, the "value received" terms of the deed implied a family
relationship, possibly brother-to-brother or cousin-to-cousin,
Samuel Myers appears in the county at least by the date of his
survey plat, March 30, 1796. He next appears in local records in
the November term of court, 1797, when he was sued for £ 2. 1. 1.
by William Lee, a merchant.22 Myers did not appear in court, so
it was ordered that his property be sold to pay the debt. This was
done in February, 1798, when the Samuel Myers land was sold
by the Randolph County sheriff.23 Samuel Myers, possible
relative of Jacob, thus appears in Randolph County in March,
1796, and seems to have departed before November, 1797. He
appears in no other records.

Jacob Myers appears on an undated Randolph County tax
list which the author assigns to either 1798 or 1799 — probably
1798. Myers is not listed as a landowner, either because he had
not yet received his offered grant, or because he had not
registered the grant to escape taxation.24

Myers' final appearance in the county records is on
November 22, 1799, when he and a neighbor, William Dickey,
were sued for an unspecified debt by "Henderson, Burton &
Co. " Myers was present at the time, for he was actually jailed for
debt. Another neighbor, Philbert Wright, paid both bail and
court costs. The case was continued without judgment.25 By
February, 1802, the debt seems to have been transferred from
Henderson and Burton to a local merchant, Alexander Gray. At
that time William Dickey was again jailed for a £ 41 debt re-
maining from 1 799 -26 Jacob Myers is not mentioned, indicating
his death or disappearance sometime between November, 1799,
and February, 1802. Myers does not appear on any North
Carolina census for 1800.

No Randolph County records can be found calling Jacob

42 MESDA

Myers a potter; however, they do pinpoint his term of residence
in the county. He presumably arrived some time after the census
of 1790, yet before October, 1793, and evidently died or left the
county between November, 1799, and February, 1802. This is
compatible with the activity period revealed by the archae-
ological evidence, 1775-1800. The single item of a personal
nature indicated by land records is that Jacob was probably
related to a Samuel Myers.

In view of the exhaustion of the meager Randolph County
records and recalling the relationship to the Moravian com-
munity populated by the archaeological evidence, attention was
directed toward research in Moravian records. Was there some
Salem or Bethabara journeyman or apprentice named "Jacob
Myers' ' who was known to have worked in the shop of Gottfried
Aust? If so, could he have been a resident of Salem when he was
not present in Randolph, and vice versa? And, most important,
was he related to someone named Samuel? As a matter of fact,
there was a Salem apprentice who filled the requirements
exactly: Philip Jacob Meyer.

Philip Jacob Meyer, also called Jacob Meyer, Jr. , was born
October 25, 1771, in Bethabara, where his father, Jacob Meyer,
Sr., was tavernkeeper.27 Three months later the Meyers were
transferred to the new Salem Tavern, where their second son,
Samuel, was born October 10, 1775. 28 Meyer, Sr., was a moody,
ineffectual man, given to spells of self-doubt and brooding
introspection. He was frequently reproved by the Collegium for
his inability to prevent members of the congregation from
enjoying the amusements of the tavern. As the center for the
activities of "strangers" in Salem, the management of the
tavern would have been a difficult assignment for anyone, and
the uncertainty of the Revolutionary period intensified the
situation. In 1776, four drunken men armed with guns, clubs
and tomahawks attacked and wounded the Meyers at the tavern
during a rampage through Salem. After the attack, Meyer
became more and more incapable of dealing with his duties.29

Meyer's chief responsibility, and greatest difficulty, lay in
tending the tavern's bar. In 1778, Meyer was brought before the
Aufseher Collegium to answer charges that his own young
children had taken to drink. The committee issued Meyer a
forceful warning that "it should not happen again . . . that his
children are making themselves drunk with wine and other
strong drinks, because it has such a bad influence on their body

May, 1980 43

as well as on their soul." Meyer abjectly begged forgiveness of
the authorities, confessing that "he did not know how he
should educate his children in the right fashion."30 In 1782,
Meyer and his family barely escaped the fire which totally
destroyed the tavern. The effect of this environment on Jacob,
Samuel, and their sisters can be imagined. Jacob, Jr. later
admitted to the Collegium that he had "had a very bad child-
hood . . ."31

In January, 1786, Jacob, Jr. was apprenticed to Gottfried
Aust to learn the ' 'pottery trade. "32 Meyer, Sr. does not seem to
have approved of the situation, for he frequently complained of
the "lack of supervision" from Br. Aust.33 This did not endear
Meyer to Aust, who responded with complaints of "difficulties
with the son of Mr. Meyer who is his apprentice."34

In April, 1788, Aust left for Philadelphia to "be cured of a
cancerous sore." In his absence, the pottery was to be run by
apprentices Franz Stauber and Jacob Meyer.35 With Aust's
departure and subsequent death, Jacob Meyer, Jr. began to
figure prominently in Salem activities. "Since the last meeting
of the Collegium several bad pranks have been played again.
Several Brothers think that Jacob Meyer has a part in them,
because of one very bad utterance which he made and because
of the fact that he has been involved in several bad things
already . . ."36 Nor was the 17-year-old Meyer completely

Figure 19. Cream pots excavated at the Mount Shepherd site, glazed inside
with clear and brown iron-oxide glazes. HOA 7%", diameter at rim 7'/s" (left);
HO A 7", diameter at rim 9Vx" (right). Bivins photograph.

MESDA

successful in running the pottery. In December, 1788, it was
noted that "At the occasion of the last burning of pottery in the
shop, Jacob Meyer heated the kiln too much so that most of the
pottery is crooked."37 When Rudolf Christ arrived in January,

- , r

Figure 20. Cream pots from the Aust and Christ pottery sites in Bethabara,
1756-1771 (left) and 1786-1789 (right), glazed inside with brown iron-oxide
glazes. HO A 7V%" (left) and 5V\f>" (right). MESDA/ Old Salem, Inc. research
file S-1967.

1789, to take over the Salem pottery, it was suggested that
Meyer's indenture be transferred to Br. Christ. Meyer, however,
displayed a high regard for his own abilities by objecting to the
indenture, and insisting on "conditions."38 Meyer was again
censured by the Collegium at this time: "Jacob Meyer has
bought new clothing which, for an apprentice, is absolutely
unfitting . . ,"39

In June, 1789, the Salem authorities decided that Meyer was
such an incorrigible problem that he should be asked to leave
town. "Phillip Jacob Meyer ... is not yet old enough to leave
the community, though it would be well not to keep him
because it is better for such people, who do not want to stay in
the community, to go before they influence others."40 Meyer
seemed willing to accept banishment, the Moravians' strictest
social sanction, even though it entailed a complete separation
from the church and relegated the subject to the status of a
' 'stranger. ' ' Life in the tavern seems to have inspired Meyer with
wanderlust, for he immediately set out on a trip to New Bern.41
Several weeks later, he stopped in for quick visits at Salem and
Bethabara, then set out for Pennsylvania.42

May, 1980 45

In November, 1789, Meyer returned from Virginia and
joined the Bethabara household of his brother-in-law, Gottlob
Krause.43 Krause, a former Aust apprentice, working as a brick-
mason and potter, probably offered Meyer the opportunity for
journeyman work in his new pottery shop. Meyer may have had
a great responsibility for running the Krause pottery, since
Krause's services as master mason were much in demand in
Salem at the time.

On March 27, 1791, Meyer married Susannah Hilsebeck,
probably in Bethania.44 The Hilsebeck family was almost cer-
tainly not Moravian, but rather Dunker, as was Meyer's best
man, Frederick Shouse.45 ("Dunker" is the common name for
German Baptist Brethren.) In January, 1792, Meyer's only child
(a son, Heinrich/ Henry) was born in Bethania.46 Jacob Meyer,
Jr. does not appear in the Moravian records until his death at
Bethabara, September 22, 1801. 47 Meyer's wife seems to have
died during the interregnum; in December, 1801, the Stokes
County court ordered that "Henry Myars, orphan" be bound to
Isaac Boner, his uncle by marriage, to learn the trade of a
hatter.48

Samuel Meyer seems to have led a relatively turbulent exist-
ence similar to that of his brother. In February, 1789, he was
apprenticed to the Salem tanner, Br. Yarrel.49 In September,
1793, he was accepted into the choir of Single Brethren.50 Soon
after, however, he seems to have fallen off the narrow path. By
April, 1794, his behavior was scandalizing the community.
"We do not see any improvement in the way of life of Sam.
Meyer; on the contrary it becomes worse all the time. It was
reported that on Easter he was [wandering] with strange women
through the community and drank with them in the night.
Hauser from the Stillhouse was also in his company, where they
have been drinking together."51

This behavior in addition to an unrepentent attitude almost
led the Collegium to banish Samuel in late April.52 In May,
however, he apologized, "and asked for our patience."53 He
was put on probation, but by July he was in trouble again. He
had been asked to turn over his rifle to the Collegium because
his "shooting hobby" gave him "opportunity to behave vio-
lently."54 Not only did Meyer refuse to give up his rifle, "but
he [had] also said, with bad expressions, that he [was] going
shooting with it whenever he likes."55

In November, 1794, Samuel Meyer was also asked to leave

46 MESDA

Salem. He had been "tolerated up to now in the community
under the one condition that he might stay as long as his
behavior is good. We have heard anew that he is taking up with
unpermitted relationship to women, and Br. Yarrel was asked to
dismiss him as soon as possible . . . "56 Br. Yarrell, however, was
not happy to let Samuel go and asked him to come back to work
at the tannery. The Collegium quickly squelched this plan."
Sometime in 1796 Meyer married Elizabeth Jones, though the
date and place of the event are unknown.58 In March, 1797,
Meyer returned to Salem and tried to gain permission to work
for Br. Yarrel during the summer. The Collegium strongly dis-
approved.59 Yarrel seems to have ignored the wishes of the Col-
legium, however; in September he was rebuked for allowing
Meyer to work for him.60 Samuel soon moved to the Friedburg
settlement south of Salem, where the birth of the first of his
seven children was recorded in 1799. Meyer drifted from job to
job, perhaps a victim of alcoholism. He died in Bethania on
March 12, 1811, leaving his family in poverty.61

Jacob Meyer, Sr. died in 1800, his final years aggravated by
dropsy and the sad plight of his family. All but one of his four
children "had fallen away from the strict ways in which they had
been reared. Their loss seemed greatly to magnify his other
griefs. At times he was inconsolable, sobbing convlusively over
his failure to keep them faithful to the church, 'begging and
pleading to the Savior that he would have mercy on them ..."
. . . Evidently neither of Meyer's sons visited his sickbed. His
neighbors noted sympathetically that "It aroused the deepest
compassion to see him in his weak old age weeping so bitterly
because of them. ' '62

Though we cannot state unequivocally that the Mount Shep-
herd potter was the former Aust apprentice, Jacob Meyer, there
is an extremely high probability that this is the case. When the
documentary records of Randolph County and the Moravian
Archives are compared, the two are found to be complementary,
not contradictory. Neither Jacob nor Samuel "Meyer" can be
found in Wachovia when Jacob and Samuel "Myers" are pres-
ent in Randolph County. But the question that must then be
answered is, why would an ex-Moravian have moved to Ran-
dolph County from Salem? Wasn't the population there mainly
English?

This confusion is due to a misinterpretation of local history,
both that of Randolph County and Piedmont North Carolina as

May, 1980 47

a whole. It must be realized that the Moravians in 18th-century
North Carolina were one German religious group of several. The
North Carolina backcountry sheltered representatives of vir-
tually every Pennsylvania-German church; this was especially
true of what is now northwestern Randolph and eastern David-
son county. Existing fraktur birth and baptismal certificates call
attention to the Lutheran and Reformed congregations of
Davidson,63 but the groups in the Uwharrie River/Shepherd's
Mountain area left fewer records of their existence.

The region was brought to the attention of white settlers at
least as early as 1701 when the explorer John Lawson contacted
the local Keyauwee Indians. Their palisaded village was located
near the ford of the Great Trading Path across Caraway Creek.64
The Great Trading Path, or "Occaneechi Trail," was the major
prehistoric highway in North Carolina. It ran diagonally across
the state from Virginia to South Carolina, and was the most
important colonial migration route before the opening of the
Great Wagon Road. August Spangenberg and his party of
Moravians had used the Trading Path to enter the backcountry
on their 1752 surveying expedition to Wachovia. In October
Spangenberg's party stayed at "Rich's on Caraway" and noted
an account with "Joh. Rich, tavern keeper."65 This tavern and
trading post (Fig. 21), also known as "Ridge's Place,"66 was
located near the site of the earlier Keyauwee village. The Mount
Shepherd site, less than a mile from the site of the Trading Post,
was situated on the so-called "Ridge Road" which ran north
from the Trading Path67 to intersect the upper "Road to Cape
Fear," the highway from Salem to Cross Creek (Fayetteville).
German settlers from Pennsylvania and Maryland had begun to
filter into the area by 1760, buying property from land
speculator Henry McCulloh and his son Henry Eustace. The Mc-
Cullohs had advertised their 100,000 acre tract in the area as
"the Rich lands of the Uwharrie," and its charms had attracted
hordes of settlers by the time of the Revolution. In 1772, the
Baptist historian Morgan Edwards wrote of the Uwharrie Con-
gregation of Dunkers or German Baptists, the largest of the
three North Carolina Dunker congregations.68 The area was
visited several times in the early 1770s by the Moravian mis-
sionary, George Soelle, who described a teeming multitude of
competitive German Sectarians.69

Although differing in relatively minor religious points,
many German churches practiced some form of world renunci-

48 MESDA

Figure 21. A plat map of the Mount Shepherd section of Randolph County,
showing the pottery site and location of most of the landowners of the im-
mediate area, including the Trading Path. The manuscript of the map was
prepared by the author, based upon measured plats in land records. Artwork
by Jim Stanley.

May, 1980

ation in an effort to preserve moral and ethical purity. For Mora-
vians, it was to eschew "worldly " dress and ostentatious living.
For Dunkers, it took the form of an aversion to formal education
and organized politics, thought to be incompatible with a
philosophy of "primitive" Christianity. Dunkers, like Mennon-
ites, refused to take oaths of any kind and were therefore unable
to engage in lawsuits. This left the Uwharrie Dunkers vulnerable
to exploitation during and after the Revolution, when many
members lost their property to predatory speculators. Although
they had scrupulously refrained from participating on either
side of the conflict, the pacifistic sectarians were accused of
siding with the Tories, and steps were taken to confiscate their
lands. Those who denied religious scruples to exercise their legal
rights of possession saved their land; those who did not lost it
and began to move west. By 1807, the Dunkers were all but
gone from the Uwharrie.70

Salem's Philip Jacob Meyer seems to have had ties to the
Dunker families living in Wachovia. Both his wife and marriage
bondsman were residents of the Bethania vicinity north of
Salem, and the likelihood is that both were Dunkers.71 And it is
interesting that the Jacob "Stuchman," or Stutzman, who
entered a tract of land adjoining Meyer in 1795, was the religi-
ous leader of the Uwharrie Dunker congregation.72 In view of
these ties to the German Baptists, perhaps it is much less sur-
prising to conceive of Meyer's opening a pottery operation in
Randolph County. Samuel Meyer may have intended to set up
his own tannery next to his brother. Alcoholism, combined with
his own fractious personality, probably led him into debt and
sent him back to the safety of Wachovia. The probable death of
his wife, combined with his own financial difficulties, may have
caused Jacob to return to Bethabara. His early death73 soon
thereafter could have been related to lead poisoning from his
work with glazes; Gottfried Aust's own son died of that malady.

The weight of evidence compounded during this analysis has
been brought together to support the author's near-certainty
that the heretofore unknown potter working at the Mount Shep-
herd site was the former Moravian apprentice, Philip Jacob
Meyer. The most important implications of this identification
are to the study of Moravian ceramics and an understanding of
at least the final years of Gottfried Aust.

One month after Meyer was apprenticed to Aust, Rudolf
Christ left the Salem pottery for his own Bethabara operation.

50 MESDA

Meyer left Salem just two months after Christ returned to take
over that pottery.74 Aust, then, not Christ, was likely the forma-
tive influence on Meyer. The formative influence upon Gottlob
Krause had been from Aust as well, although Krause and Christ
had been apprentices together; Meyer almost certainly worked
for Krause in Bethabara as a journeyman potter. Meyer left the
Moravian community and was isolated at least from 1793 to
1799. This was the period in which Christ introduced faience,
stoneware and press molded bottles into the Salem production,
diverging significantly from Aust's former production.

It therefore seems a logical conclusion that Jacob Meyer's
work habits and practices, as well as his ceramic output as exem-
plified by the Mount Shepherd archaeological evidence, most
closely resembled that of Gottfried Aust and Gottlob Krause
instead of the divergent Christ production. It can also be
expected that Mount Shepherd ware should bear similarities to
18th-century specimens excavated at the Krause workshop site
in Bethabara, since Meyer worked at both places. Most impor-
tantly, the Mount Shepherd kiln should be closely related (if not
identical) to those used by Aust and Krause in Salem and Betha-
bara. It is not known what alterations or variant kiln designs
Christ may have introduced during the 1790s. Whatever they
were, it can be expected that Christ passed these improvements
or variations along to his own apprentices, such as John Butner.

In the final analysis, an effort to preserve the distinctions
between the Moravian potters and the traditional piedmont
North Carolina potters is not without validity. Jacob Meyer,
although trained in the "Wachovia vernacular," established a
geographical distance between himself and his antecedants
which reflected the philosophical and religious schism between
himself and the Moravians. Elements illustrating this new stylis-
tic freedom established themselves in products such as his stove
tiles.

Meyer's mild divergence from the mainstream of pottery
design in Wachovia underscores the importance of understand-
ing the stylistic development in the work of potters who had left
large establishments to set up on their own. Many contem-
poraries of Meyer who had been Aust and Christ apprentices, in
fact, operated potteries on the fringes of Wachovia and even
outside the Moravian settlement. A good sample of the work of
some of these men still exists in the collection of Old Salem,
Incorporated and in private hands.

May, 1980 51

Due to the increasing illness of Gottfried Aust, it is apparent
that pottery production declined in Salem during the 1780s,
though during the 1790s and through the first quarter of the
19th-century redware production increased through the vigor-
ous efforts of Rudolf Christ. During the early 1800s, however,
the growing population of piedmont North Carolina began to
support an increasing number of new potteries, and the market
for Moravian wares thereby narrowed considerably.75 Although
Rudolf Christ had produced salt-glazed stoneware for a brief
period, this ware apparently never assumed any great impor-
tance in Salem. Nineteenth-century preference for that sturdier
ware for utilitarian purposes, however, gave emphasis to the
work of other potteries around the state and effectively broke
the near-monopoly the Moravians had held in earthenware pro-
duction in North Carolina during the 18th-century.

Mr. Whatley is a native of As be bow. North Carolina, and a 1977
graduate of Harvard College. He has worked as an archaeological
assistant for the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology,
Williamsburg, and as an architectural historian for the North Carolina
Division of Archives and History, Raleigh.

FOOTNOTES

1. Kelly, J. H., "Report on the Mount Shepherd Pottery Site, Randolph
County, North Carolina," typescript dated October, 1971.

2. Ibid.

3. Outlaw, Alain C, "Preliminary Excavations at the Mount Shepherd Pot-
tery Site," The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers. 1974.
Vol. 9, pp. 2-12.

4. Bivins, John, The Moravian Potters in North Carolina. (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 236.

5. Outlaw, Alain C, "Mount Shepherd Pottery Site National Register
Nomination," typescript, Sept. 1979.

6. Outlaw, "Preliminary Excavations," op. cit., p. 4.

7. Gottlob Krause intermittently became bored with the mason's trade and
wished to return to potting. In 1788, he was reprimanded for his "inten-
tion ... to make pipe heads, for which he has already ordered forms from
Christiansbrunn [Christian Spring]." Minutes of the Aufseher Collegium
(hereinafter cited as AC), 10 June 1788; Moravian Archives, Moravian
Church in America, Southern Province, Winston-Salem, N.C., herein-
after cited as Moravian Archives, Southern Province. All AC translations
cited in this work were prepared by Erika Huber.

8. Whatley, L. McKay, "Moravian Tile Stoves of the American Colonial
Period," B.A. Thesis submitted to the Dept. of Fine Arts, Harvard
College, April 1977.

52 MESDA

9. Outlaw, "Preliminary Excavations," op. at., pp. 4-5.

10. Rhodes, Daniel, Kilns: Design, Construction, and Operation. (Phila-
delphia: Chilton Book Co., 1968).

11. Powell, Elizabeth A., Pennsylvania Pottery, Tools and Processes. (Doyles-
town, Pa.: The Bucks County Historical Society, 1972), p. 16 & 17.

12. Clauser, John W., "The Excavation of the Bethabara Pottery Kiln: An
Analysis of Nineteenth Century Potting Techniques," Master's Thesis
submitted to the University of Florida, 1978.

13. AC, April 15, 1788; Moravian Archives, Southern Province.

14. "A number of craftsmen in other trades who are known to have been asso-
ciated with Salem masters . . . were left unmentioned in the records, in
some cases because the apprentice was a non-Moravian and technically was
not supposed to be trained in the community. ' ' (Bivins, Moravian Potters,
p. 64.)

15. Bivins, John, Jr. , Longnfles of North Carolina. (York, Pa., George Shum-
way Publishers, 1968), p. 41.

16. Randolph Co. Land Entry Book #2, Miscellaneous Papers, Randolph Co.
Clerk of Court's Office, Asheboro, N.C. "No. 453 — to be issued to
Jacob Mires — John Lacy enters 100 acres lying on Uwharrie, on South side
Shepherd's Mountain, August 4, 1790.

Transferred to John Sheets.
Transferred to Jacob Mires."

17. No. 453, 100 acres entered byjacob Myers, surveyed October 18, 1793, by
William Lowe. Original in the files of the North Carolina Secretary of
State, Land Grant Office, Raleigh, N.C.

18. No. 289, "Notice of survey authorization by Entry Officer," dated Jan.
20, 1794. 100 acres entered Oct. 21, 1793, byjacob Myers, "Beginning at
a pine on his own line." Original in Land Grant Office files.

19. January 20, 1795: Jacob Hoover enters 100 acres "between David Hoover
and Jacob Myers" (No. 10). January 26, 1795: Jacob Stuchman enters 100
acres "joining Rudolph Wamire, Andrew Sheets, Jacob Hoover and Jacob
Myers." (No. 11). Land Entry Book #3- Miscellaneous Papers, Randolph
Co. Clerk of Court Office, Asheboro, N.C.

20. Endorsement on verso of survey plat No. 289, "I do assign over all my
Right and Claim of the Within Land Warrant of one hundred acres to
Samuel Myers for Value Received." Dated March 12, 1796, signed "Jacob
Myers (Seal)." Original in Land Grant Office files.

21. No. 289, 100 acres adjoining Jacob Myers, surveyed for Samuel Myers
March 30, 1796 by William Lowe. Original in Land Grant Office files.
Grant recorded Feb. 1800, in Deed Book 8, page 136, Randolph County
Register of Deeds Office, Asheboro, N.C.

22. "Case #3. William Lee vs. Samuel Myers. Justices Judgement & Execution
£ 2. 1. 1. and court costs 8/. Executed on 100 acres of land joining
William Boyd, John Sheets and Jacob Myers. On Motion the court ordered
the land sold Agreeable to Law & c. (Order Issued). ' ' Appearance Docket,
Randolph County Court Records, Nov. term 1797 (N.C. State Archives,
Raleigh).

May, 1980 53

23- "... pursuant to an order of the county court . . . commanding the
sheriff to sell the land of Samuel Myres; Executed by a Constable to satisfy
a judgement and Execution obtained by William Lee before a justice of
the peace for the sum of £2 lsh. id. to be paid before the 3rd. Monday in
February 1798 . . ." Recorded in Deed Book 8, page 20; Deed from
Simeon Geren, High Sheriff of Randolph County to Jonathan Justice,
August 20, 1798. Randolph Co. Register of Deeds Office, Asheboro,
N.C.

24. "A List of Capt. Wray's District," undated manuscript, N.C. State
Archives, Raleigh. The list is either the missing 1798 or 1799 tax list for
the Uwharrie River/ Shepherd's Mountain area. Since the statistics are
lower than the existing 1799 totals, the author assigns the list to 1798.

25. "Case #2. Henderson, Burton & Co. (vs.) Jacob Myers and Wm. Dickey.
Executed. Bail — Philbert Wright. This suit directed to continue, as it
now stands. See plaintiffs' letter. Philbert Wright promises to pay the
costs next court. Clerk . . . 14/, tax . . . 5/, sheriff . . . 14/8. Paid at
February term 1800." Appearance Docket, Randolph County Court
Records, Nov. term 1799. (N.C. State Archives, Raleigh).

26. "Case #5. Alexander Gray & Co. vs. William Dickey — Debt. Executed.
Bail — Richard Miller. Judgement confessed by the defendant in p. p. for
£41.3 with interest from the 22nd day of Nov. 1799 until paid and costs.
Stay execution 6 months." Appearance Docket, Randolph County Court
Records, Feb. Term 1802. (N.C. State Archives, Raleigh).

27. Bethabara Church Book, 25 October 1771; Moravian Archives, Southern
Province.

28. Fries, Adelaide, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina (Raleigh:
North Carolina Historical Commission), vol. 7, p. 3133. Hereinafter cited
as Fries, Records of the Moravians.

29. James, Hunter, "A Tavern in the Town," The Three Forks of Muddy
Creek, Vol. IV, 1977 (Old Salem, Inc., Winston-Salem, N.C.) p. 39.

30. Ibid., p. 40.

31. AC, 9 June 1789, Moravian Archives, Southern Province.

32. AC, 17 Jan. 1786, Moravian Archives, Southern Province.

33. "Concerning Jacob Meyer's work in the pottery, it has to be said that his
father does not like to have him there, and we are very sorry that so little
supervision is in the pottery." AC, 30 May 1786, Moravian Archives,
Southern Province.

34. Ibid., 6 Feb. 1787.

35. Ibid., 3 April 1788.

36. Ibid., 4 Nov. 1788.

37. Ibid., 30 Dec. 1788.

38. Bivins, Moravian Potters, p. 63.

39. AC, 3 March 1789, Moravian Archives, Southern Province.

40. Ibid., 9 June 1789.

41. Fries, Records of the Moravians, Vol. 5, p. 2284.

42. Ibid.

54 MESDA

43. Fries, Records of the Moravians, Vol. 5, p. 2286. When Meyer visited his
parents in Salem two days before, he and a companion had been asked to
leave town "because their bad company can do more harm than real
strangers. " (AC, 3 Nov. 1789).

44. Stokes County Marriage Bonds, N.C. State Archives, Raleigh. It should be
noted that Salem's "Philip Jacob Meyer" or "Jacob Meyers, Jr." here
signed his name "Jacob Myers. " The spelling "Jacob Mires" in the bond
is that of a court official. Erghteenth-century orthography adds an addi-
tional dimension of complexity to a search. Jacob's father was universally
referred to in Moravian records as "Jacob Meyer, " yet his will spells his
name three different ways, and his signature reads "Jacob Mayer. "

45. Friedrich Hilsebeck, probably the father of Susannah, "formerly belonged
to [the Moravian Church], but a number of years ago severed his connec-
tion with us." Fries, Records of the Moravians, Vol. 6, p. 2635.

46. Bethania Church Book, 13jan. 1792; Moravian Archives, Southern Province.

47. Dobbs Parish Graveyard Records, Moravian Archives, Southern Province.
The Dobbs Parish or "stranger's" graveyard where Meyer was buried is
located near Bethabara.

48. Stokes County Court Records, Dec. 8, 1801. (N.C. State Archives,
Raleigh) "ordered that Henry Myars orphan of Jacob Myars Dec'd. Aged
10 years the 13th of Feby. next be bound unto Isaac Boner ... to learn the
art and mystery of a hatter ..." Isaac Boner had married Jacob Meyer's
sister, Dorothea.

49. AC, 10 Feb. 1789; Moravian Archives, Southern Province. The appren-
ticeship bond was not written until December 1789 {AC, 8 Dec. 1789),
and it was noted that "The boy Sam. Meyer was now contracted to Br.
Yarrel ..." {AC, 12 Jan. 1790).

50. "Four boys were accepted this year in the Choir of the Single Brethren.
They are . . . Sam. Meyer ..." AC, 10 Sept. 1793; Moravian Archives,
Southern Province.

51. Ibid., 22 April 1794.

52. "From the remarks of Sam. Meyer we cannot see that his behavior has
changed and that he is sorry for what he has done. Therefore the Col-
legium thought it would be best for him to leave us soon. This can be told
to Br. Yarrel in another conference with the Collegium." Ibid., 29 April
1794.

53- "Sam. Meyer has asked some time ago that he would like to try once more
to act according to the Community Rules, and asked for our patience."
Ibid., 13 May 1794.

54. Ibid., 20 May 1794.

55. Ibid., 1 July 1794.

56. Ibid., 4 Nov. 1794. On November 11 it was reported that ". . . Sam.
Meyer is going to leave Salem today."

57. "We have heard that [Yarrel] has asked Sam. Meyer to work for him on
the days which he is not riding the mail ... we cannot permit this nor that
[Meyer] lives with him ..." Ibid., 2 Dec. 1794.

58. Samuel Meyer's wife "Holdy Gons" (Jones) is listed in the Friedberg
Church Book at the birth of son Philip Jacob Meyer, 8 November 1803,

May, 1980 55

while she is listed as "Elisabeth Jones" at the birth of son Isaac Thomas, 4
April 1810 (Bethania Church Book); Moravian Archives, Southern
Province.

59. "Sam Meyer, who was formerly here in the community, has asked
whether or not he could work in the summer for Br. Yarrel; his parents
were told in the Elder's Conference that this could not be permitted . . .
(Meyer) must not be tolerated in the community." AC, 21 March 1797;
Moravian Archives, Southern Province.

60. "Br. Yarrel has employed Sam. Meyer though he knows perfectly well this
is not allowed . . . when asked about this he said that Meyer had asked
him for employment for just a few days [until] his father-in-law would
find him a place to live. However, [Yarrel] said Meyer had left him already
..." Ibid., 25 Sept. 1797.

61. "The Memoir of Samuel Meyer," Salem Diary, 1811; Moravian Archives,
Southern Province. This account of Meyer's life makes no mention of his
possible residence in Randolph County. However, the short sketch seems
to skip from Meyer's marriage in 1796 to events shortly before his death,
and emphasizes Meyer's deathbed conversion back into the church.

62. James, "A Tavern in the Town," pp. 44-45. Meyer's will (Stokes County

Wills, N.C. State Archives) was written 6 years before his death. It leaves
his "large German Bible" tojacob, Jr., to be property of grandson Henry.
There is no further information about their relationship.

63. See John Bivins, Jr., "Fraktur in the South: An Itinerant Artist," Journal
of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Vol. I, November 2. (Nov. 1975).

64. Lawson, John, A New Voyage to Carolina, H. T. Lefler, ed., 1967.
(Chapel Hill; University of N.C. Press), pp. 56-59.

65. Fries, Records of the Moravians, Vol. 2, p. 519.

66. In 1763 the tract was acquired by John Ledford, one of the Germanic
immigrants of that period. In later deeds the trading post seems to be
referred to as "the Old Caraway House." Godfrey Ridge, a German resi-
dent of the late eighteenth-century, and the name of the nearby Ridge's
Mountain, may be related to the Ridge of the trading post. See also Rowan
Co. Deed Book 5, pp. 336-7, Henry McCulloh to John "Sitfford" (Led-
ford); 200 acres on Shepherd's Fork of Caraway. Also, Randolph Co. Deed
Book 8, p. 353, "... cross the path leading from said Ledford's to the Old
Caraway House" (1802).

67. Part of this road, so-called because it followed the crests of the hills, is still
used as the access road to the Mount Shepherd camp.

68. G. W. Paschal, ed., "Morgan Edwards' Materials Toward a History of the
Baptists in the Province of North Carolina," North Carolina Historical
Review (July, 1930), Vol. VII, No. 3, p. 393.

69. Diary of the Rev. George Soelle, 1771: "This is a unique species of
people. They appear to me like Aesop's crow which feathered itself with
other bird's feathers. They have Moravian, Quaker, Separatist, Dunkard
principles, know everything and know nothing, look down on others,
belong to no one, and spurn others." Quoted in John Scott Davenport,
"Earliest Pfautz/Fouts Families in America," National Genealogical
Society Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 4 (December, 1975), p. 255.

56 MESDA

70. Dr. John Scott Davenport, a professor at Brigham Young University,
Provo, Utah, is the acknowledged authority on the history of the North
Carolina Dunkers and this sketch of the Uwharrie Dunker Congregation
follows his outlines. His Pacifists, Loyalists, Collaborators: The Dunkers in
North Carolina During the Revolution is a soon-to-be-published work on
the subject.

71. Dr. Davenport characterizes the Bethania area as having been settled by a
number of Dunker families, one of which was the Shouse family.

72. Stutzman's home property lay on the west bank of the Uwharrie, near the
county line. The reasons why he would enter a tract of mountain land
non-contiguous to his own are open to speculation.

73. There is no "memoir" or the type of posthumous biographical sketch
written for members of the Moravian Church existing for Meyer. He died
outside the church.

74. Meyer was apprenticed Jan. 17, 1786; Christ moved to Bethabara Feb. 10,
1786.

75. The governing committees of Salem had recognized Aust's increasing in-
capacity as early as 1786, when Christ was finally allowed to establish his
own pottery at Bethabara. At this point, it was noted that "old Br. Aust is
very weak and stays in bed most of the time." (Bivins, Moravian Potters,
p. 29). This probably engendered Jacob Meyer, Sr.'s complaints about the
lack of supervision at the pottery {AC, 30 May 1786; Moravian Archives,
Southern Province). Aust departed for Pennsylvania in April, 1788; the
pottery was under the chaotic management of the two apprentices for nine
months before Christ arrived to take charge (Bivins, op. at., p. 30). In
1789, Frederic William Marshall, the Administrator of Wachovia,
reported to the Unity Vorseher Collegium that "More potter shops are
being built in the neighborhood, and while they make little good ware it
hurts our market, and it is a wonder that our pottery has been able to
maintain itself, especially as the purchasers generally want to buy for
products which it cannot always take." (Fries, Records of the Moravians,
Vol. 5, p. 2283). In his 1793 report, Marshall hinted that Christ's experi-
mentation with new product lines such as faience was to lure customers
back to Salem (Bivins, Moravian Potters, p. 15). By 1795 Marshall is able
to report a resurgance, as the Salem operation "... continues to have a
larger trade than we expected as our pottery is better made, so that during
the last year we could not always supply all that was wanted." (Bivins,
Ibid. , p. 16). Christ had added stoneware to his regular production by
1803 (Bivins, Ibid. , p. 84). The roots of the non-Moravian stoneware tra-
dition is presently unknown, but by the second quarter of the 19th-
century it was flourishing all across the piedmont.

The author is greatly indebted to Alain Outlaw, now the Commis-
sioner of Archaeology for the State of Virginia, for permission to
itemize and illustrate Mount Shepherd material in advance of his
forthcoming site report. The research assistance of Mrs. Bobbie Gngg
and Dr. John S. Davenport is sincerely appreciated, as is the help of
Mrs. Kathleen Whatley in the preparation of the manuscript. The
author is also indebted to Pat McPherson, Larry Trotter, and the
Board of Managers of the Mount Shepherd Retreat Center.

May, 1980 57

Figure 1. Desk-and-bookcase, ca. 1800, attributed to Peter Eddleman, cherry
with desk interior of walnut, yellow pine secondary wood. HO A 81 Vi " , WO A
45xh" , DOA 21". MESDA accession 2364-2.

MESDA

City Meets the Country:

the Work of Peter Eddleman, Cabinetmaker

Luke Beckerdite

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a
number of cabinetmakets flourished in the Catawba Valley
region of North Carolina. Stylistically, the groups of furniture
associated with these craftsmen are quite similar, each possess-
ing design features suggesting a Delaware Valley influence as
well as distinctly regional characteristics. While it is possible that
the groups of furniture are related, the correspondence of
stylistic details can also be understood as the development of a
regional style. Illustrating the mainstream development of style
within the Catawba Valley is the furniture attributed to Peter
Eddleman, the region's only cabinetmaker to whom extant
pieces may be attributed at this time.

Located in North Carolina's southwestern piedmont, the
Catawba Valley was rapidly populated in the middle of the
eighteenth century by Scots-Irish and German colonists from
the Delaware Valley; this influx of settlers through the Valley of
Virginia continued virtually unabated until the eve of the Revo-
lutionary War. Included among the later contingent of settlers
on the western Carolina frontier was the family of Peter Eddle-
man. The term "frontier" may be somewhat of a misnomer,
since numerous trades were established in the piedmont region
by the 1770s. In the Catawba River Valley one of the earliest
industries was ironmaking. Lincoln County, for example,
boasted of several merchant furnaces actively engaged in pro-
duction by 1798; Joseph Graham was the proprietor of Vesuvius
Furnace, Alexander Brevard of Mount Tirzah Forge, Peter
Forney of Mount Welcome, and John Fulenwider of High

May, 1980 59

Shoals.1 Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries these furnaces flourished, creating a source of wealth
which provided support for the region's tradesmen.

Peter Eddleman [Adleman] was born in 1762, the first child
of Bastion and Sarah Eddleman. Bastion had immigrated to
America from the German Palatinate, settling in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania, about 1750.2 By 1768, the family had emigrated
from Bucks County to Rowan County, North Carolina, where
they resided until after the end of the Revolutionary War.3

Peter Eddleman may have learned the cabinetmaker's trade
during his family's residence in Rowan County. The 1781 diary
of John Arends mentions payment made to a Peter Eddleman
for carpentry work.4 Unfortunately, Arends' entry is in-
conclusive, as there were at least three different men named
Peter Eddleman living in Rowan County in the late eighteenth
century.5 That cabinetmaker Peter Eddleman did work in the
carpenter's trade may be true. Aside from this duplicity of
trades commonly occurring in the Carolina backcountry, oral
tradition in the Catawba Valley has maintained that Eddleman
was responsible for the interior woodwork of the Thomas Rhyne
House6 and finish carpentry of the Lincolnton Tavern.7 Peter
Eddleman could have been apprenticed as early as 1776;
however, this appears unlikely, since he enlisted for service in
the Rowan Militia in 1777 as a substitute for his brother-in-law,
Leonard Clifford [Seiffert?].8 In 1780 and 1781 he again served
with the militia, each time as a replacement for Michael
Holdshouser.9 Assuming that Eddleman was apprenticed in
Rowan County, his indenture must have fallen between the
years 1781 and 1784, since his sporadic tours of duty with the
militia would have rendered an earlier apprenticeship somewhat
impracticable.

By 1784, the Eddleman family had apparently removed to
Lincoln County, North Carolina, for on April 24, 1794, Amos
Spiece of that county paid Bastion Eddleman £ 20 for a tract of
land bearing a patent date August 17, 1784. 10

Peter Eddleman may have opened his own shop in Lincoln
County by 1791. On January 28, 1791, he purchased from Jacob
Sides a tract of land on the "waters of Leeper's Creek."11 A
tributary of the Catawba River, Leeper's Creek appears on the
1808 Price-Strother map of North Carolina and is located near
the town of Stanley in present-day Gaston County. Peter Eddie-
man's land transaction would have placed him in close proxim-

60 MESDA

ity to Thomas Rhync, one of the cabinetmaker's patrons. Rhyne
had immigrated to America from Germany, settling in Lincoln
County about the middle of the eighteenth century. Within a
short time, Rhyne had accumulated a considerable fortune,
primarily in land holdings.12 Apparently Thomas Rhyne's pros-
perity enabled him to commission Peter Eddleman to make
furniture appropriate for his imposing new home. Rhyne's five
bay, Flemish-bond brick house was completed in 1799. Glazed
headers spelling out the owner's initials and that date were laid
in the face-brick of the chimney.

Rhyne family tradition maintains that Eddleman completely
furnished the Rhyne House during the course of a year.13 While
that time-span might be considered questionable, the existence
of a large press (Fig. 6) and a desk-and-bookcase (Fig. 1) attests
to the authenticity of the fact that Thomas Rhyne bespoke work
with Eddleman. Penciled on the back of the bookcase of the
desk-and-bookcase is an early twentieth century provenance of
the piece, delineating ownership through the Rhyne, Pegram,
and Reinhardt families. The furniture that Peter Eddleman
made for Thomas Rhyne was appropriate for a man of property;
however, variations in ornamentation and design features in his
furniture indicate that he also worked for those of lesser means
(Fig. 4).

In 1817, Peter Eddleman left the Catawba Valley for a
lengthy visit with his brother in the Missouri Territory. Affirm-
ing Eddleman's sojourn is a December 10, 1817, receipt for his
$67 purchase of a "sorrel mare with a bald face" in Cape
Girardeau County.14 Peter Eddleman may have returned to Lin-
coln County during the summer of 1818, for on the fourth of
September he sold Richard Cowan eight acres of land on
Leeper's Creek.15

Eddleman continued in the cabinetmaker's trade after his
return. On February 14, 1821, he took John White as an
apprentice "for a full term of three years" to "learn the art
trade and mystery of a shop joiner."16 In 1825, he may have
enlarged or remodeled a house located on the "Forks of Dutch-
man's Creek,"17 where he probably operated a workshop in or
near his house.

At the age of sixty-three, Peter Eddleman made a late start
on a family, for on March 25, 1830, he married Dicia Swanson
Clippard, a widow with three young children. Their first son,
David Franklin, was born in 1831 and their second, William

May, 1980 61

Peter, in 1833.18 Apparently, Eddleman was flourishing in areas
other than his trade, for his sons were born when he was aged
sixty-nine and seventy-one. That Peter Eddleman continued to
be active is further demonstrated by his attendance of a Fourth
of July celebration in 1836. Eddleman was recorded as one of
several Revolutionary War soldiers present who "responded to
toasts."19

With the exception of one land transaction, little is known
of the last decade of Peter Eddleman's life. On January 21,
1847, he signed his last will and testament, bequeathing to his
wife, Dicia, his land, "Mansion House . . . out buildings and
improvements," and four negroes,20 a bequest which suggests
that Eddleman had enjoyed a successful trade..

A stylistic study of the furniture attributed to Peter Eddle-
man is predicated upon an understanding of the culture of the
region in which he learned the trade and later worked. A
substantial percentage of the early settlers of the western pied-
mont originated in the Delaware Valley. Throughout the period
of the southward migrations, Philadelphia was the cultural
center of the Delaware Valley; around this cosmopolitan city a
regional culture had developed that was comprised of both
English and Teutonic elements. With the southward migra-
tions, the cultural identity of the Delaware Valley was thereby
extended to include piedmont North Carolina.21

Isolated from the Middle Atlantic colonies and North Caro-
lina's tidewater region, the piedmont culture developed an in-
clination towards regional mannerism.22 Sophisticated design
features introduced to the piedmont by northern cabinetmakers
were rapidly absorbed by the provincial culture of the North
Carolina backcountry. Within the Catawba Valley region, this
process of assimilation resulted in the development of an iden-
tifiable regional style.

A number of stylistic details employed by Eddleman in the
construction of case pieces suggest a Delaware Valley influence.
Typical design indices include the use of robust ogee feet with
spur-like responds, narrow fluted quarter columns, and, in desk
interiors, conventionally arranged writing compartments with
ogee-blocked drawer fronts.

The Rhyne desk-and-bookcase (Fig. 1) exemplifies the vary-
ing degrees of success achieved by Eddleman in the employment
of urban design features. The serpentine blocking of the small
drawers and fenestration of the interior of the desk section are

62 MESDA

very much in the Philadelphia manner. Forming the top of the
pigeon-holes is a simply incised, C-scroll fascia which effectively
accentuates the plan of the drawer fronts. Less sophisticated is
the desk's central prospect door. The simple door fluting
evidently was Eddleman's interpretation of an urban architec-
tural detail (i.e. fluted pilasters) frequently associated with the
prospects of Philadelphia examples. Behind the prospect door is
a removable compartment with two small drawers in the front
and two concealed drawers in the rear. Red staining, a decor-
ative technique of the Federal period, was used by Eddleman to
accentuate the desk interior.

In both form and ornamentation, the exterior of the desk-
and-bookcase (Fig. 1) demonstrates a rural approach in the use
of sophisticated details. Surmounting graceful yet exaggerated
ogee feet, the desk section is adorned with thin fluted quarter
columns with unusual inlaid "fluting" and thick, lunetted-
corner band inlay on the case drawer fronts and the faces of the
fallboard slides. The bookcase has quarter columns that are
identical to those of the Rhyne china press (Fig. 8c). A certain
lack of architectural understanding is present in the quarter-
column application on all Eddleman-attributed furniture
examined in that the base turnings are also made to serve for
capitals as well. This naive reversal of the classical order is occa-
sionally found on other examples of southern case furniture.
Also a backcountry statement is the use of face-mounted table
hinges on the bookcase doors. Presenting a decided contrast to
the restrained cyma recta molding and Wall-of-Troy denticu-
lation of the bookcase cornice is the heavy-handed architectural
quality of the chamfered fields of the raised-panel doors. Iden-
tical field treatment is found on all of Eddleman's pieces that
employ such paneling.

The construction techniques employed in the Rhyne desk-
and-bookcase are characteristic of Eddleman-attributed case
furniture in general. Drawer construction is quite distinctive.
The drawer bottoms are paneled on four sides (Fig. 2) rather
than having bevels on only three edges as usual. While normally
encountered drawer bottoms have a nailed butt-joint at the rear,
Eddleman's drawer frames completely trap the bottom.
Although this technique is unusual, it does occur infrequently
in other piedmont furniture. In the construction of the case, the
sides, back, and stiles of the desk section continue to the floor,
forming supports for the feet. Both the sides and stiles are

May, 1980 63

Figure 2. Detail of a drawer bottom of the desk-and-bookcase illustrated in
Pig- 3.

shaped to conform to the profile of the ogee feet. Because the
case sides extend below the base molding, the bottom of the
case is set into ploughed grooves rather than being dovetailed. A
desk which descended in the family of Peter Eddleman's young-
est son, William Peter, however, has construction details which
differ slightly from other examples. In contrast to the interior
treatment of the desk-and-bookcase (Fig. 1), the stiles of the
Eddleman family desk's upper case drawers are not mortised
through the writing surface. Also, the vertical backboards of this
desk are secured with trunnels (pegs) where the backs of other
Eddleman pieces are nailed. This employment of alternative
fasteners is considered typical of Germanic cabinetwork.

Presenting a stylistic deviation from the writing compart-
ment of the Rhyne desk-and-bookcase is the interior of another
desk-and-bookcase (Fig. 3). Although the interior drawer
arrangement is the same in both pieces, other design features
are divergent: drawer fronts are flat rather than serpentine; in
the place of a prospect door is a prospect compartment with
cove-molded interior and exterior edges, and over each pigeon-

MESDA

Figure 3- Writing compartment of a desk-and-bookcase , 1795-1810, at-
tributed to Peter Eddie man. Walnut with yellow pine secondary wood. Private
collection. MESDA research file S-1711.

hole the fascia is shaped to form two cyma curves peaking in the
center rather than having C-scrolls. In exterior details the desk-
and-bookcase is similar to the Rhyne example (Fig. 1). The
treatment of the bookcase doors is identical and, with the excep-
tion of the base and capital turnings, the quarter columns are
the same. According to family tradition, both the desk-and-
bookcase and the corner cupboard (Fig. 4) were made for
William Rankin, who lived about a quarter of a mile from
Thomas Rhyne.

One of Eddleman's less opulent pieces, the Rankin corner
cupboard has a certain formal German Baroque aspect nonethe-
less. Stylistically and structurally the cupboard demonstrates a
decided regard for solid construction, characteristic of German
craftsmanship. Exemplifying this concern are the beveled-field,
raised paneled doors, thick materials, large square trunnels, and
heavy moldings. Although the cornice molding is a replace-
ment, construction details indicate that the original* molding
was of similar scale. The case is constructed in one piece and
probably once had cove and ovolo bed molding and ogee feet.

Retreating further from the more restrained appearance of
the preceding examples is the corner cupboard (Fig. 5). Obvious
regional developments include the naively incised lunettes and
heart in the cove of the plinth of the central finial (Fig. 5a), the

May, 1980

Figure 4. Corner cupboard, 1795-1810, attributed to Peter Eddleman, walnut
with yellow pine secondary wood. HO A 85 ", WO A 43 % ". Feet missing and
cornice replaced. Private collection. Beckerdite photograph.

globular shape of the finials, and the surprising "port-hole"
piercings in the central stile of the upper case. Apparently, these
glazed ports were Eddleman 's own conceit, for, with the excep-
tion of waist-door occuli of clock cases, they have no known
parallel in southern furniture. On this cupboard normal stylistic
details occur architecturally out of context. For example, shell-
like devices are used as spandrels, and the heavy cornice frieze is
jammed against the elaborate extrados of the door arches.

Visually, this corner cupboard is something of a badly inte-
grated explosion of ornament, somewhat reminiscent of regional
stylistic developments in Pennsylvania-German settlements west
of Philadelphia. The enormous size and preponderant horizon-
tal proportions of the cupboard also contribute to its mannerist
image by making design features, such as the Wall-of-Troy
denticulation of the pediment and inlaid frieze of the base,

MESDA

Figure 5. Corner cupboard, 1800-1820, attributed to Peter Eddleman, walnut
with yellow pine secondary wood. Feet and center fimal replaced. HO A
IOIV2", WO A 56Vs". Private collection. MESDA research file S-1698.

May, 1980

Figure 5a. Detail of center finial and plinth decoration of the tympanum of
the corner cupboard illustrated in Fig. 5.

appear unusually conspicuous.

Apparently, lozenges were a favorite inlay motif, since they
occur on three Eddleman pieces: the corner cupboard (Fig. 5),
breakfast table (Fig. 6), and china press (Fig. 7). The inlay work
on the breakfast table is yet another indication of the cabinet-
maker's rural interpretation of urban detail. Circumscribing the
huge fan inlay on the side rail is an unusual lozenge and string
inlaid band which terminates in odd funnel-like details. The in-
lay is provincial not only in appearance but also in the technique
by which it is applied. The diamond band on the top of the
table was formed by inlaying directly into the solid rather than
being made as a separate strip and set into a channeled cut.
Inlays applied in this manner may be peculiar to Eddleman's
work within the region.

Epitomizing the process of assimilation associated with the
development of regional style is the china press (Fig. 7). Urban
stylistic details, including fluted quarter columns, ogee feet,
and a broken scroll pediment are incorporated in the design of
an essentially regional furniture form. It would seem that Eddle-
man had a bit of difficulty in adapting at least one of these
details to the enormous scale of the press since the cornice is
overtly lopsided. Again, design features are used out of context.

MESDA

The nosing of the upper bed molding is notch-carved and an in-
laid fascia appears below the drawers of the lower case (Fig. 7a).

The inlay on the china press is its most conspicuous regional
feature. Somewhat reminiscent of fraktur work, the tulip on the
tympanum appears to grow out of the medial molding above
the central stile, its florets accentuating the arch of the doors
(Fig. 7b). Also inlaid in the tympanum are fylfots (pinwheels), a
familiar Pennsylvania-German motif. On the fascia above the
lower case doors and outlining the arched doors are elongated
lozenge inlays (Fig. 7). The same diamonds are shaped and
assembled to form the stars between the glazed ports of the cen-
tral stile (Fig. 7c).

Judging from the furniture made by Peter Eddleman, it is
clear that urban details could be employed successfully by rural
cabinetmakers; however, these details did not always survive
intact in the backcountry environment. Ths scallop shell adorn-
ing the tympanum of the corner cupboard (Fig. 5a), for in-

Eigure 6. Breakfast table, 1800-1820, attributed to Peter Eddleman, walnut
with yellow pine secondary wood. HO A 30", WO A open 46", DO A 40V%" .
MESDA accession 2073-26.

May, 1980

Figure 7. Press, ca. 1800, attributed to Peter Eddleman, walnut with yellow
pine and walnut secondary woods. Feet replaced to the original pattern. HO A
less fimal 116", WO A 70", DO A I8V4". Private collection. MESDA research
file S-1694.

MESDA

stance, appears in stylized form as the fan-like detail on the
china press (Fig. 7).

IBB

m * -*

F/gare 7tf. Detail of the upper bed molding and frieze inlay of the press il-
lustrated in Fig. 7.

Figure 7 b. Detail of the tympanum inlay of the press illustrated in Fig. 7.

May, 1980

Northern artisans from the Middle Atlantic region intro-
duced certain sophisticated stylistic details to the North Carolina
backcountry in the middle of the eighteenth century, but in a
provincial environment tempered by cultural lag, these design
features could not continue unaffected. Within the Catawba
Valley region, the influence of the folk culture gave rise to more
than just the retention of forms. As the furniture attributed to
Peter Eddleman illustrates, the result was the development of a
unique regional style.

Figure 7 c. Detail of the center stile of the upper case of the press illustrated in
Fig. 7.

Mr. Beckerdite is a student in the Historic Preservation program at
Wake Forest University and currently works with the MESDA staff as
an intern.

FOOTNOTES

1. William L. Sherill, Annals of Lincoln County (1937 reprinted, Baltimore:
Regional Publishing Co., 1972), pp. 436-438.

2. John H. Eddleman and William R. Eddleman, Genealogical Papers of the
Eddleman Family, Copy in the Research Files of the Museum of Early
Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, hereinalter
cited as MRF.

3- U.S. Pension Bureau, Revolutionary War Pension Application, File No.
W7085, N.C. Service, United States Pension Bureau, Washington, D.C.
Peter Eddleman states that his mother told him that he was born in 1764
and that his family moved to Rowan County when he was about six years

MESDA

old. Because his service in the Rowan militia and the date on his tomb-
stone indicate a 1762 birth date, the family's move was probably around
1768.

4. Diary of John Arends, Copy on file at the Davidson County Public
Library, Lexington, N.C., p. 5.

5. Deed Book 13, Rowan County, p. 212.

6. Interview with Mrs. Barbara Rhyne. Stanley, N.C., October 13, 1979.

7. Interview with Mr. John H. Eddleman, Lowell, N.C., October 15, 1979.
S. Pension Application.

9. Ibid.

10. Deed Book 19, Lincoln County, p. 446.

11. Deed Book 16, Lincoln County, p. 153-

12. Rhyne Interview.

13. Ibid.

14. Peter Crites to Peter Eddleman, Receipt, December 10, 1817, Copy in
MRF under Eddleman, Peter. Apparently, Peter Eddleman left the
Catawba Valley in 1817. On September 1, 1817, he sold a tract of land on
Leeper's Creek. (Deed Book 28, Lincoln County, p. 565). According to
Eddleman family tradition Peter's visit with his brother in the Missouri
Territory was of one or two years in duration (Eddleman Interview).

15. Deed Book 29, Lincoln County, p. 244.

16. Indenture of John White, February 14, 1821, Copy in MRF under Ed-
dleman, Peter.

17. There is some question as to whether Eddleman built or remodeled a
house. The chimney of the house was dated 1825 (Eddleman, Genealogi-
cal Papers); however, according to one descendant, Peter Eddleman
remodeled an eighteenth century house (Mrs. W. H. Jarman to John
Bivinsjr., Copy in MRF under Eddleman, Peter). Since the house burned
in 1966, a determination of its date cannot be made.

18. Eddleman, Genealogical Papers.

19. Sherrill, Annais, p. 117.

20. Last Will and Testament of Peter Eddleman, January 21, 1847, Copy in
MRF under Eddleman, Peter.

21. Robert W. Ramsay, Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Caro-
lina Frontier, 1747-1762 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1964), p. 9.

22. John Bivins, Jr., "A Piedmont North Carolina Cabinetmaker: The
Development of Regional Style," The Magazine Antiques, Vol. 103, No.
5, May 1973, p. 968.

For assistance in preparing this article 1 would like to thank Mrs. W.
H. Jarman, Mr. John H. Eddleman, Mr. William R. Eddleman, Mrs.
Barbara Rhyne, Mr. Frank Rankin, Mrs. Richard Rankin, Mr. Earl
Meachum, and Mrs. Dorothy Welker, whose chronology of events in
Eddleman 's life simplified this study 's organization. Special thanks
are extended to Mr. John Bivins and Mr. Frank Horton, without
whose insights this article would not have been possible.

May, 1980 73

MESDA seeks manuscripts which treat virtually any facet of southern decora-
tive art for publication in the JOURNAL. The MESDA staff would also like to
examine any privately -he Id primary research material (documents and manu-
scripts) from the South, and southern newspapers published in 1820 and earlier.

Back issues of Thejouma/
are available.

PLEASE NOTE: Information regarding MESDA membership and donations
will no longer be published in the Journal, but will appear instead in the
MESDA Luminary in February and August each year.

Photographs in this issue by Bradford L. Rauschenberg, the Museum
of Early Southern Decorative Arts, except where noted.

74 MESDA

MUSEUM OF EARLY SOUTHERN DECORATIVE ARTS

FRANK L. Horton, Director

MlSS BRYDING ADAMS, Assistant to the Director

BRADFORD L. Rauschenberg, Research Fellow

Mrs. SALLY Gant, Educational Coordinator

Mrs. William L. Putney, Jr., Associate in Education

Mrs. ARMAND W. ESTES, Archivist

JOHN BlVINS, Jr., Publications

MlSS PATRICIA PRUETTE, Secretary /Receptionist

FIELD RESEARCHERS

Miss Olivia Evans Alison

6434 Plantation Road

Roanoke, Virginia 24019

Miss Mary Witten Neal

20 N. Washington Street

Winchester, Virginia 22601

Miss Catherine Roe

603 Hudgins Street

Chase City, Virginia 23924

Miss Jane Webb Smith

1203 Cedar Park Road

Annapolis, Maryland 21401

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